"$5 billion?" Terry couldn't help but be a little stunned when he heard the translated numbers. Obviously, this offer was significantly lower than his psychological expectations.

"$5 billion? Mr. Cai, I heard you right, right? Terry asked, repeating the number. This is a business with annual sales revenue of more than 10 billion US dollars, a team of more than 40,000 people, a global channel network, 10,000 mobile phone patents and a world-renowned brand. ”

"No, Mr. Terry, this is not a joke, $5 billion is the result of our cautious valuation, although Nokia mobile phones have 10,000 mobile phone patents, but according to iRunway's analysis, the proportion of core patents in the 4G era is extremely low, and the proportion of all 4G basic patents is only about 4%."

"This figure is even lower than that of Nortel, which went bankrupt that year, and the overall auction price of all Nortel's patents that year was $4.5 billion, according to which we valued Nokia's mobile phone patents at $3.5 billion as a whole. As for the Nokia mobile phone brand, the valuation of the consulting firm that compiled the list of the world's 100 most valuable brands will not exceed $4 billion now. ”

"These two items should be the most valuable part of Nokia's mobile phone, as for personnel, frankly speaking, it is an out-and-out negative asset, consuming up to $4 billion a year, you must know that Apple's investment in mobile phones is not only $2 billion, so the reduction of R&D personnel in mobile phones is inevitable, according to our calculations, to solve this part of the surplus R&D personnel, the company will spend at least $3 billion."

"So add up or subtract the first three items, about $4.5 billion, so plus $500 million in other net assets, we value $5 billion, which is a pretty fair price."

A phoenix with a falling hair is not as good as a chicken. Terry may not know this Chinese proverb, but he must know it now.

But what Cai Siqiang said is not completely unreasonable, this has to blame the evil capitalist society for too much protection of workers, and it is really a very painful thing to lay off workers, and it is even more difficult in Europe.

In recent years, HP laid off 9,000 employees, paid more than $1 billion in restructuring costs, and paid more than $110,000 in severance expenses per capita. Since 2012, HP has laid off another 27,000 employees, paid $3.5 billion, and paid $130,000 per person.

What's more, the powerful corporate unions in Europe would rather let the company go bankrupt than agree to such large-scale layoffs, otherwise Nokia would have survived long ago.

In terms of the existing sales scale of Nokia's mobile phones, more than 40,000 people are too much, and there is no shortage of manpower in laying off half of the staff, but the problem is that there are more than 20,000 employees, and Terry can't solve it even if he gives him $3 billion.

Thinking of this, Terry couldn't help but be a little confused, he couldn't get rid of these redundant employees, could SAL have any panacea to solve it, you must know that even if Nokia's mobile phone business changed hands, at least in a few years, SAL would not be able to do whatever he wanted.

"Mr. Cai, I think we all have a common point of view, which is that there are too many people in Nokia's mobile phone business right now. But mass layoffs can ruin the entire company directly, and I'm curious to see what approach you're going to do to solve this problem. ”

Terry couldn't help but ask, though he knew that the other party was likely to prevaricate.

But Cai Siqiang has really seriously considered this problem, and the solution is not mysterious, but this method has no ability to be imitated by others at all, so at this time, they don't want to hide it from Nokia's top management.

"We're not going to do mass layoffs." Cai Siqiang said bluntly. "We will provide a lot of transfer opportunities to absorb this part of the human resources."

Changing positions? After listening to the translated words, Terry couldn't help but enter a dizzy state again, and more than 20,000 people were transferred? What business can have such a large manpower requirement?

Could it be that this is the legendary flickering kung fu that the Chinese are best at?

Sampson, on the other hand, was not convinced, and his instinct was that the so-called transfer was just a euphemism for layoffs, as disingenuous as the early retirement programs used to be offered in the West.

Looking at the other party's look of disbelief, Cai Siqiang smiled, but he was not ready to explain in depth, because if he went deeper, some things would inevitably leak out, which was not conducive to future negotiations.

"We can commit to not making large-scale layoffs of more than 500 people for at least three years after the acquisition, but only to carry out normal employee performance elimination." Cai Siqiang added.

In fact, this manpower is really very useful, because SAL's new mobile phone adopts the same model as Apple and Android to create an application ecological chain.

As a brand-new system, Duke did not intend to rely entirely on the private sector to complete the construction of this ecological chain. You must know that it is not that everyone started at the same starting line now, but that the opponent has run far away.

Whether it's the Android platform or the Apple iOS platform, there are now millions of applications on it, and it is basically impossible to catch up with these two platforms by relying solely on external developers to accumulate.

Unless the new SAL mobile phone can completely knock down the first two in hardware, but this is basically not expected in the short term and a few years, because the hardware of most mobile phones is still under the control of others, and the new SAL mobile phone may be able to innovate in the screen or power supply in hardware, but it is difficult to form an overwhelming advantage.

Duke saw this very clearly. So Duke thought a lot about the software. The first is the seeding plan made earlier, which is to invest huge resources to support developers based on the new system, including the use of the crowdsourcing platform that it has acquired, which is also an important part of this seeding plan.

On the other hand, I have taken the lead in developing many practical applications, and the creativity comes from the consistent practice of powerful penguins, looking for all the valuable ideas that can be imitated, and then starting from imitation until it is completely surpassed.

More than 20,000 developers are undoubtedly a huge R&D force, and Cai Siqiang can fully imagine how destructive this R&D army will be under the leadership of Duke.

As for the cost of adopting more than 20,000 R&D personnel, Cai Siqiang asked himself that the expenditure of more than 2 billion US dollars is really nothing in the future R&D investment of SAL.

As long as the mobile phone business can reach half the level of Apple, this is really just a drizzle.

This is Cai Siqiang's confidence and bullishness, even if he says it now, Terry will definitely not be able to imitate it, because Nokia will definitely not be able to produce a demonic genius like Duke in software development.

But that's not what Terry could understand, and then there was an exchange of views on some very technical issues. After a day of hard negotiations, the demands of both sides were basically fully stated.

Naturally, such a meeting will not be able to decide the outcome of just one meeting, and although Terry is in charge of Nokia's mobile phone business, such a major decision is not something he can decide.

Therefore, the two sides agreed to contact again in two weeks to see whether the next round of in-depth negotiations would be held.