"Mr. Walker, Hong Kong's upper-middle-class families have basically adopted computers, and with the advent of Internet cafes, low-income middle- and lower-class people have also been given the opportunity to use computers cheaply. Among them, 600,000 Internet users regularly surf the Internet, accounting for nearly one-tenth of Hong Kong's total population.

The Internet is gradually becoming a part of Hong Kong people's daily life, and Voice of Asia, as Hong Kong's largest integrated information portal, has become the most important position for Hong Kong netizens to surf the Internet. The value of our advertising is becoming more and more recognized by mainstream customers!

The Coca-Cola Company just signed us for a one-year on-page display campaign. Mercedes-Benz Automobile's Hong Kong agent, Jardine Matheson, has also entered the final stage of reviewing and signing our advertising contract!

While listening to the introduction of the beautiful operations director of the Voice of Asia Network next to him, Walker was actively thinking. The president of MCI obviously didn't pay even the slightest attention to the glamorous workplace beauty next to him.

Although the Voice of Asia website is not yet profitable, its advertising revenue is growing rapidly. Hong Kong's Internet development is a special case in the world, and it has started to actively explore commercialization in advance, and it is clear that it has made a lot of progress.

For example, the credibility and brand value of the Voice of Asia website have gradually begun to be recognized by the mainstream business community. Mercedes-Benz Motors, a mid-to-high-end car brand from Germany, is a Mercedes-Benz car brand from Germany, and its agents will strictly screen their partners when advertising and marketing. Just like those really famous and powerful doctors, even if they open private clinics, they will never choose to put psoriasis advertisements on roadside telephone poles to promote themselves.

The example of Hong Kong also proves that the commercialization of the Internet is a promising thing. After all, Hong Kong has a population of only five or six million, and its development potential is inherently insufficient. The United States has a population of 200 million, and once the Internet industry starts to kick off, the energy that bursts out is far beyond that of Hong Kong.

When Walker thought of this, he couldn't help but feel a little excited, what a huge blue ocean this was. The basic communication infrastructure is in the stage of transformation from cable to optical cable, but because optical fiber is a new technology and expensive to build, the pace of replacement of US telecom operators is not fast.

In the past, MCI tried to challenge AT&T's dominance in the U.S. telephone market through technological leadership, so it invested boldly in optical fiber. Walker's trip to Hong Kong has obviously given him a deeper understanding of the significance of fiber optic technology.

As his boss Li Xuan said yesterday, the Internet really has the potential to revolutionize the way human beings communicate information. Walker's trip to Hong Kong was a shot in the arm, and he was convinced that MCI's strategy of going all-in on fiber optic networks was completely correct. It can not only play a huge role in the field of telephony, but also enable MCI to seize the opportunity in the future Internet era. The acquisition of AOL's network access business has also become urgent for MCI.

And Walker is obviously not the only smart person, and MCI can only be regarded as a peripheral enterprise in the Eastern Bloc. Even it has been keenly aware of the new opportunities brought by the Internet, and hopes to complete the layout in advance through the acquisition of AOL. The other companies within the Eastern Bloc are naturally even less likely to remain indifferent.

After the World Wide Web technical group under the Oriental Research Institute successfully formulated the technical standards of the World Wide Web, Li Xuan allocated a part of the technical backbone from it to establish a new company called EastGraphicBrowser.

The company, known simply as EGB, is not at all conspicuous, and even most of the top management of the Eastern Bloc has not paid serious attention to it. The only achievement of EGB since its inception has been the development of a graphical browser called "Navigator".

The name "Navigator" was given by Li Xuan to commemorate Netscape, a pioneer of the Internet industry in another time and space. It was the "Navigator" browser developed by Netscape that made the wave of global Internet commercialization surging all at once. In the nineties, before Google Chrome was born, a famous browser war broke out between "Navigator" and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Microsoft in this time and space is already yesterday's yellow flower, and Netscape is definitely stillborn, and it is impossible to appear. The "Navigator" browser, which was developed by EGB, was bundled with the East operating system of Oriental System Software in the form of a free trial version at the beginning of its birth.

At the same time that MCI wanted to acquire AOL (American Online Casino), AOL also sent a takeover offer to Oriental Research Institute to acquire their wholly-owned EGB company. AOL is definitely the most Internet-minded company in the entire Eastern Group, but the Oriental Research Institute has received more than one offer for EGB.

Dongfang System Software Co., Ltd. and Dongfang Commercial Software Co., Ltd. also issued a motion to wholly acquire EGB. In order to curb the disease of large companies, Li Xuan gave full autonomy to the subsidiaries of the Oriental Group. Therefore, although everyone is an industry under Li Xuan's name, they all operate according to formal business processes.

"Jonathan doesn't seem to have a good time lately!" Li Xuan hung an earthworm on the hook, and then threw the fishing rod out again, she had just caught a small crucian carp one inch long.

"Haha, the shareholders are still putting a lot of pressure on him!" He Guoyuan smiled heartily.

The two were fishing in a pond in Tin Shui Wai, and Jonathan, whom they referred to, was the successor to succeed He Guoyuan as CEO of Oriental System Software. The reason why the two of them gloated a little over this man's plight was simply because he was not the nominee of the Eastern Bloc.

Oriental System Software is not an absolute subsidiary of Oriental Group, and its shareholding in Oriental System Software has been declining since the introduction of IBM. After the completion of the listing of Oriental System Software on the Nasdaq, Oriental Group's stake has been diluted to just 32.5%.

Of course, the Eastern Group is still the largest shareholder, holding more than the 13.5% of IBM, the second-largest company. Moreover, the Oriental Group is still firmly in control, and the vast majority of management positions in the Oriental System Software Company.

However, after He Guoyuan, the former chairman and CEO of Oriental System Software, resigned and returned to Hong Kong to serve as the president of Oriental Commercial Company, Li Xuan continued to fully control the board of directors of Oriental System Software, but the CEO responsible for the company's daily operations was given to IBM, the second largest shareholder, to be nominated.

With the full popularity of personal computers in the United States, the operating system as a human-computer communication interface has increasingly shown its special and important position. If it weren't for Li Xuan's strong backing in American politics and his initiative to give up absolute control, the competitors would have been able to make the Eastern Bloc unable to go around on a single national security ground.

You must know that the East operating system of Dongfang System Software Company has almost completely monopolized the personal computer operating system market, and the huge cash flow and profit margin it generates make the software company not short of money at all, and there is no need to go public for financing.

However, Li Xuan still chose to let Dongfang System Software Company be listed on the NASDAQ, becoming a public company subject to investor and market scrutiny. And Li Xuan took the initiative to give up the key position of CEO this time, which is a release of goodwill to those who have a heart, Oriental Group is a law-abiding pure commercial company with no bad purpose.

But is it really that simple? The answer is obviously no! As far as the Eastern Group is concerned, the biggest threat to its control of the Oriental System Software Company is the second largest shareholder, IBM, which is not very stable.

After Oriental Systems Software showed an increasingly strong ability to attract money, IBM did not give up the idea of annexing it. Especially after the Oriental Group voluntarily gave up its absolute controlling stake, IBM saw the possibility of practical operation.

It's just that Li Xuan is not so stupid, when the Oriental Group introduced IBM as the new shareholder of Oriental System Software, it forced the other party to accept a series of poison pill clauses to prevent IBM from launching a surprise acquisition of the new company. But to completely dispel IBM's misconceptions, it is necessary to make public investors, who own nearly 45 percent of the company's shares, lose confidence in IBM.

Dongfang System Software's market share in the field of personal operating systems has exceeded 95%, which has almost reached its peak, and it is impossible to make any breakthroughs. If the company's management wants to continue to drive the company's performance, it must open breakthroughs in other aspects, such as enterprise-grade server operating systems.

The rise of workstation computers and servers has been driven in large part by eroding the original small and midsize markets. The original computer giants like IBM have undoubtedly suffered a heavy blow in this round of computer technology revolution.

Compared with the "2E Alliance", which has completely controlled the entire voice of the personal computer industry from the beginning of the ERM architecture processor and the East operating system, the market competition for enterprise server computers is much more fierce and chaotic. Although the Oriental Research Institute also launched the MIPS architecture early, giants like IBM naturally cannot tolerate other companies encroaching on their own territory.

With their own profound technical accumulation, they are not busy at all to catch up. And in the field of processor operating systems, Li Xuan's room for opening a golden finger is undoubtedly much smaller.

From the beginning, Oriental System Software chose to buy the rights to the Unix system from the University of Berkeley and develop it himself, but although the Unix system is very classic, it has been extended to countless versions since its birth in the laboratory of AT&T (Bell) in 1970.

And this undoubtedly makes the competition in the field of server operating systems extremely chaotic and fierce. However, Dongfang System Software still has a considerable advantage, because it has an absolute monopoly advantage in the field of personal computer operating systems. When a company chooses to build its own local area network, it is impossible to choose one operating system for the microcomputer and another operating system for the server.

A new version of the East-Unix operating system, recently released by Eastern System Software, has begun to support mainframe systems. And this is absolutely untouchable for IBM, it can give up the personal market, and even give up the minicomputer market, but the mainframe is definitely the core source of profits for IBM, once this field is also broken through, IBM may face a life-and-death situation.

Of course, the mainframe market has completely different characteristics from the ordinary computer market, and its special customer needs determine that the mainframe does not necessarily pursue the most advanced technology, but pays more attention to technological stability. For example, if an operating system has a stability of 99.9% and crashes every 100 days on average, if it is a personal computer, users are perfectly acceptable, but if it is a user like a bank, even a crash once in three years will kill them!

Li Xuan never had the luxury of expecting that Dongfang System Software Company would be able to seize time from IBM at once, but the next strategy of Dongfang System Software Company will undoubtedly pose a huge threat to IBM.

In another time and space, Microsoft, after achieving great success in the personal operating system, turned its attention to the Office family of office software. By the time it began to make efforts in the field of server operating systems, it was already in the mid-to-late nineties, and in fact, Windows-NT and Windows-Server were far less brilliant than personal operating systems.

When Li Xuan split Dongfang Software Company, he classified the office software as a whole into another Dongfang commercial software company, and it held shares with Dongfang System Software Company. Most of the equity of the system software company in Li Xuan's hands is held in the name of commercial software, and the two companies complement each other and can share the dividends of mutual growth.

This allows Dongfang System Software Company to devote itself to the competition in the field of operating systems. And Jonathan, who was nominated by IBM, although he won the important position of CEO of the system software company, was undoubtedly roasted on the fire. If he wants to be recognized by shareholders, he must lead the company to produce sufficient performance in the field of server processors, and this will inevitably cause a lot of friction with his own back-office, IBM.

The best way to solve this kind of struggle is naturally mergers and acquisitions, but Li Xuan and the Oriental Group have blocked this road in advance. And if Jonathan can't come up with a convincing enough performance, then Li Xuan just has an excuse to smear IBM and completely lose the favor of other shareholders. Therefore, Li Xuan's move can be described as retreating into advance, which will definitely make this Mr. Jonathan very uncomfortable!

Of course, Jonathan's ability to be favored by IBM and launched as a pawn in the struggle with the Eastern Group for control of Oriental System Software is undoubted. For example, he is also keenly aware of the value of the "Navigator" browser. In the context of the popularity of Internet propositions, Jonathan also hopes to poke the G-spot of China Street investors through some actions, so that the stock price trend will look better! )