readx; In April 2001, Stone Group launched its first MP3 player, which was considered by the industry to be a self-defeating move, because the ridiculous MP3 was not the mainstream audio playback standard. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

Indeed, in the era when CD audio listening is still popular, tape audio listening has not been completely withdrawn from the market, and MD as an alternative to light products has just opened up part of the market, MP3, which is at least not a popular audio compression method in China, seems to have a really worrying market prospect.

However, Stone Group only advertised in China but did not sell the product, but instead let the MP3 player named ROC be launched in the United States market, and the price reached a staggering 356 US dollars, which also made the digital pop media in Europe and the United States shake their heads. This is simply an act that completely violates the laws of the market, and no one is optimistic about Shi Lei's crazy move.

However, just like the situation when Apple launched its first iPod, no one thought they would succeed, but Apple returned to the first-tier market and replaced other companies to become the world's largest company by market capitalization, which can be said to have monopolized the digital product industry for many years, until it was overtaken by Google after a long time.

The only company, or individual, on this planet that values Shi Lei and his Stone Group is Apple and Steve Jobs, who has returned to Apple as CEO for nearly four years. Shi Lei's MP3 player, called ROC, is obviously taken from the meaning of rock, but it also covers the meaning of rock and roll that it extends, aiming to tell everyone that this is a music product, and it is a music product that is at the forefront of the times.

When Apple and Steve Jobs saw Shi Lei's prototype, they naturally noticed the logo behind the prototype that was exactly the same as their design. The apple is an apple that has been bitten into, and the ROC is a colorful, angular stone that is exposed. What shocked Jobs the most was that the product was similar enough to the idea in his head, but it wasn't what the first generation of the iPod was like, which they were also in the development stage. To be precise, it was the appearance of the product that Jobs had in mind but was not prepared to put into the design department at this moment.

Of course, Jobs won't know,Shi Lei This is directly the design concept of the third generation of iPod on the first generation of ROC products,Outstanding appearance,Plus light weight,And a synchronous distribution of online download and transmission software called Roconline,It makes the process of downloading songs from the Internet for various different formats of burning is very simple,The most important thing is that Shi Lei on this product,It is extremely adventurous pure touch screen control,In addition to the volume keys and power buttons, There are no other buttons on the fuselage, which greatly makes the user feel convenient and practical, even if this touch screen, as well as the touch system, is only the simplest text system, can not be compatible with the display of pictures.

In that life, Apple also released their first iPod in 2001, but a little later in October, but in this life, Jobs, a genius, was obviously disrupted by Shi Lei, a reborn person, which made him have to consider advancing his own release plan.

It is no exaggeration to say that if there is only one person in this world who believes that Shi Lei's product can succeed, then that person must be Jobs. Of course, it is not only one person who thinks Shi Lei can succeed, but also those employees under his command who are completely convinced of his various ideas that are ahead of his time. More importantly, he has the support of many women and friends around him!

When retail sales began in the United States, it took half a month for the entire United States to sell more than 10,000 units. The media is like a fly that smells the smell, and has begun to make various reports on the miraculous rise of the Stone Group, of course, the theme of this time is that Shi Lei, a magical guy, is finally no longer magical, and will taste his first Waterloo.

When Jobs saw the news, his heart was full of contradictions and struggles. As a veteran computer company, if he launches iPod products at this time, although the two products have different characteristics in appearance, of course, they are equally beautiful and full of impact, but it is obvious that Apple's products will inject a boost into this market, even if the market still needs time to accept the products of Stone Group at the moment, I am afraid that after the launch of iPod, this market will be hot in an instant.

The contradiction lies here, Jobs does not want to help Shi Lei promote the market, he hopes to dominate the market. However, what if Shi Lei survived this difficult time and the market suddenly became hot? At that time, if Apple enters again, it will be considered to be a simple imitation, at least in form, I am afraid that it will really have to retreat to the next best, and it will not even be able to find a reasonable market share.

Even in the case of such a sluggish ROC sales of Stone Group, Jobs did not have the slightest doubt, and still paranoid believed that this product would be a big success sooner or later, the difference only was whether Apple could seize enough market, but Stone Group would inevitably have a place in the market.

Jobs's analysis and Shi Lei's analysis are the same, the only reason why this product can't sell is its staggeringly high price. You know, the price of MD products is only about $120, and this product is almost three times that of MD. Even if it has a lightweight, beautiful, and large capacity that MD does not have.

He remembers very well that when the iPod was launched, although the pricing was lower than his current price, Shi Lei firmly believed that when a product was so expensive that it did not match the market price, how much higher it was no longer a problem. It is precisely for this reason that he insisted on raising the price of the iPod from only about $260 to $356, which is almost a full $100 difference. Therefore, Shi Lei believes that in addition to the price, there are other reasons, how did the apple solve this problem?

After sitting in the Jiuli Village café for a whole afternoon, Shi Lei recalled many fragments in that life, and the figure of a girl in front of him flickered, asking the little maid waitress in the store if she had an iMac computer, saying that she was used to that kind of system, and was not used to using the computer system, and was not compatible with Windows, which made Americans who regarded maverick as the most cutting-edge fashion and regarded iPod as a sign of maverick, even if in the end any of Apple's products actually became arcade machines.

Shi Lei's ROC, the biggest weakness is this, he doesn't have a really completely special place.

Syllable!

Shi Lei snapped his fingers! Who says there isn't anything completely special? Referring to the more convenient system upgrade method of Apple products compared with Windows products, Shi Lei also made the ROC system into firmware and put it in the programmable unit, he hoped that his product system was upgradeable, then, through this, he could achieve the goal of being unique.

What he brought back from France was not only a series of orders for 3G, Shi Lei also found two big European boys, one named Pamela and the other called Woking. When Shi Lei saw these two people at that time, he actually compared them to Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook) who was dying later, after all, their impractical product actually had a genius-level creativity.

Regarding the products under the creativity led by these two big boys, Shi Lei has never given up development. Of course, Shi Lei never thought of developing this product as a separate product, but as an ancillary function of a certain product.

When the ROC was launched, Shi Lei built an infrared device into the fuselage, although the infrared distance is limited and the technology is very rough, but it is enough to meet this need.

Immediately fused the team led by Pamela and Wojin with the team of the old man Xu Kejia, and let them use the shortest time to integrate this kind of dating software into ROC's system. This is not a difficult task, it only took more than 20 hours to tackle the problem, and Xu Kejia easily completed this. Although this old man is stubborn to the point of stubbornness, stubbornness to the point of paranoia, he has the advantage that he has an extraordinary ability to accept things that are fresh enough. Therefore, Shi Lei's idea, the first vote in favor of it, actually came from Xu Kejia, an old man who was considered by everyone to be old-fashioned to death.

On Roconline's eponymous website, Shi Lei updated the system to tell consumers who now own ROC that they can upgrade the system for free on the website, or update an add-on. This was followed by a very streamlined but straightforward introduction to the add-on, which indicated that the new operation system could be used by infrared devices to discover the user of another product within two meters of the same product. Of course, under the limitation of infrared transmission distance, it can only be found and prompted by sound, but it cannot play a good social role. To put it bluntly, it is basically equivalent to two people passing by by mistake, and at the same time have the same ROC product, so the infrared of both sides can detect each other, and return to the unit to inform the user by means of voice prompts, so that they can find people who use the same product as themselves.

This is an extremely crude function, and it was still criticized by everyone even when Shi Lei was launched, but it really gave ROC products a label that was completely different from other products. Coupled with its high price, it became a target for more than 10,000 users to download and wear it almost instantly. Just like Shi Lei's advertising slogan said, "You are all high-quality selectors when you find the same kind among all living beings", and this alone is enough to make all people who use ROC players feel that they have suddenly become aristocrats. The psychology of pretending to be compared is innate to everyone, no matter what race, no matter what nationality, especially in a country like the United States, which flaunts a surname, which is an excellent means for young Americans to quickly find a surname collision.

Shi Lei's new advertisement is also extremely tempting, a tall and handsome guy with blonde hair and blue eyes, typically handsome and rich, of course, a luxury outfit, plus a famous car. Slowly drove into a hotel, and when I got out of the car, I suddenly got a prompt in the headphones, Gao Shuaifu looked around, and saw that the girl in a windbreaker who had just staggered past him and wrapped half of her face with a silk scarf also stopped, and there was also a prompt in her headphones, and she also turned her face to look.

The camera is closer, the girl's silk scarf is blown away by the wind, the appearance of a very typical American chick, no powder but extremely beautiful, standard whitening and thin, the eyes of the two flashed the light of love.

The camera switches, and the next scene is Gao Shuaifu playing baseball, and the whitening and thin is the cheerleader, both of them have headphones on their ears, and they are shaking dazzling and beautiful ROC in their hands!

As soon as this advertisement was broadcast, coupled with the crazy chase of more than 10,000 users, ROC finally exploded in the United States like a spring thunderbolt on the ground. In the first half month, just over 10,000 units were sold, but in the following week, sales reached 300,000 units, and most retail stores were sold out of stock, but the number of enquirers was still endless.

This is how the miracle was born, taking advantage of people's tiniest psychology, as Shi Lei expected, the price has exceeded the normal market price, and it is not afraid of being higher, and people who chase fashion can afford it. All the media collectively changed their tunes, even if they were still criticizing Shi Lei's complete failure this time this time, and when ROC began to prevail, they began to praise Shi Lei's forward-looking vision, almost praising Shi Lei to the sky.

Thinking of heaven and hell, Shi Lei became the magic boy who was the best at creating miracles again after twenty-four hours, but this time the shock he brought to the world came from a small player. Moreover, even at this time, no one thinks that the trend that has been blown from Shi Lei's ROC will lead to the almost retirement of CD and MD products!

Seeing this situation, Jobs began to rejoice that he was not greedy to gain the entire market, because he had already ordered the iPod to be launched in advance before Shi Lei launched the high-handsome, rich, whitening and thin advertisement. Although it was still a little late, it quickly attracted the attention of consumers in the market. Because the price is lower than the ROC, it can be regarded as grabbing some market, especially those who are used to using the iOS system. Jobs would not have known that because of Shi Lei's existence, his Apple would never reach the pinnacle of glory in that lifetime.

The most ridiculous thing is that in that lifetime, the prices of all Apple products remained high, and other manufacturers could only use the low price strategy to steal a part of the market. In this life, the high-priced product turned out to be the Stone Group, and Apple could only adopt a low-price strategy. Of course, this low price is compared to the ROC, and for the entire market, the price of the iPod is still high!

In June 2001, under the almost crazy posture of the European and American markets, Shi Lei finally began to release the first generation of ROC players in China, and at a high price of 356 US dollars in the United States and Europe, it was converted into Chengren people's currency, according to the exchange rate at that time, nearly 3000 yuan. However, when Shi Lei released this player in China, the price was only 1998 yuan, which made great waves in the international market.

However, these news denouncing the unfair pricing strategy of Shi Lei could not resist people's pursuit of the trend set off by Shi Lei and Jobs, and a large number of smugglers from European and American countries began to smuggle ROC players from China and put them on the European and American markets in the form of low-cost parallel imports. In the face of such a scene, Shi Lei finally smiled, smiled very happily, in that life, what he couldn't see the most was the price of Apple's series products in the Chinese market, which was much higher than that in the European and American markets, and in this life, he finally reversed this phenomenon.

Of course, in terms of products, Shi Lei has also made a lot of restrictions, and the products issued at home and abroad are significantly different in terms of the production system, which can ensure Shi Lei's ultra-high profits in the European and American markets.

At the end of the year, the number of ROC players sold by Stone Group worldwide has reached a staggering 2.7 million units, and because it was launched in April, the industry expects that the ROC sales in the coming year will exceed 4 million. And this number is because Apple has also sold more than 80 iPods.

In the face of such data, Shi Lei knew that the total sales of ROC and iPod had exceeded the sales volume of the first year when the iPod was launched. In that life, Shi Lei couldn't remember how many iPods Apple sold in the first year. However, he clearly remembers that in 2004, iPod sales were less than five million units, and this was the result of three consecutive years of growth. In less than nine months of 2001, the combined sales of ROC and iPod reached 3.5 million units, apparently because the competition between the two sides boosted the market.

Shi Lei believes that in 2002, there is no suspense that the sales volume of ROC will exceed 4 million, and it is likely to exceed 5 million units, and the iPod will inevitably have follow-up efforts. Shi Lei seized the opportunity, but Jobs's team will regain the disadvantage little by little. But at least for a few years, to maintain the absolute leading design concept, Shi Lei believes that it is absolutely no problem to suppress Apple and make Stone Group the number one predator in the digital field.

At the end of 2001, Shi Weixian was finally transferred back to Jiangdong Province and served as a member of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee and executive vice governor. And the Yao family, almost all family members in the main leadership positions, have been adjusted to varying degrees. There are those who have been promoted, and there are those who have been transferred, but without exception, none of them have stayed in the main leadership positions

(To be continued)