jdhmnovel Chapter 472 StarPhone Launches in Europe
Chapter 472 StarPhone Launches in Europe
On the day StarPhone was launched in Germany, Berlin experienced a heavy snowfall.
At 4 a.m., people started queuing outside the Deutsche Telekom flagship store on Kurfürstendamm. Snow blanketed them, turning them into white pillars. The store had to open half an hour early because the queue had stretched to the door of the neighboring coffee shop. The coffee shop owner simply moved his coffee machine to the roadside and started selling hot lattes one after another.
When the first week's sales figures came out, Chen Zhongming sent the data to Lingyun's phone. Simultaneously launched in Germany, the UK, and France, it sold 20,000 units in seven days. The number wasn't large, but it was Xinghuo's best overseas sales performance ever.
A senior executive at Deutsche Telekom privately told Zhao Weiguo with a hint of disbelief: "I've been in this industry for twenty years, and I've never seen an Asian mobile phone cause such a stir in Europe."
Ling Yun read this passage aloud to Chen Zhongming in his office. Chen Zhongming smiled and said, "Twenty thousand units isn't a lot."
"It's not a lot, but it's a start." Ling Yun put down his phone and walked to the European map on the wall. Three red dots marked Berlin, London, and Paris, with their respective shipment volumes written next to them. He picked up a red pen and drew a line under the red dots, connecting them to the next batch of cities to be supplied—Munich, Manchester, and Lyon.
Reviews from European tech media outlets also came out in the following days.
Engadget's review editor was a German named Marcus. He took a picture of himself holding the StarPhone, comparing it to a Nokia N95 and a Blackberry 8800. The review was titled "StarPhone: The First Real Smartphone." Marcus concluded with a sentence that Zhao Weiguo later quoted on the official website's promotional page: "This is not an improvement on existing phones; it's a redefinition of the mobile phone."
Wired magazine's review was more cautious. Their editors disassembled the StarPhone—literally disassembled it, prying open the back cover with a screwdriver, and laying out the motherboard, battery, and screen module one by one on a piece of white paper for a series of photos. One sentence in the review was wildly circulated on Chinese forums: "If the StarPhone can deliver on its promises, this will be the biggest revolution in the mobile phone industry since Motorola's DynaTAC."
Ling Yun was eating his boxed lunch while reading the review. He placed his chopsticks on the lunchbox and drew a line under that sentence with a red pen. He looked up at Chen Zhongming and said, "This guy understood it."
However, some disagreed. A Finnish tech media outlet titled its review "Good Product, But Nokia Will Catch Up." The article stated that while the StarPhone's touch experience was excellent, Nokia's Symbian system had a more mature ecosystem and broader carrier relationships. It concluded with the statement: "After all, the mobile phone industry has always been European territory."
When Ma Baoguo saw this review, he scoffed, "European territory? What are we then? Just dropping by?"
"The visitor scared the homeowner," Zhao Weiguo added from the side.
What truly shook the inner workings of Spark occurred in the second week.
An internal report from Nokia headquarters has been leaked. The leak occurred in a peculiar way—not through the media, but first appearing on a Finnish-language geek forum. The original report was in English, and was translated into Finnish and posted online.
When Zhao Hu sent the original text to Ling Yun's email, he called: "President Ling, have you read the report?"
Ling Yun was opening his email. "Reading it now."
One sentence in the report was underlined: "StarPhone represents a paradigm shift in the mobile phone industry; its touch interaction and ecosystem model far surpass our current Symbian system. The Board of Directors is advised to give it high priority."
"Was this written by Nokia themselves?"
"Yes. The reports from the internal strategic analysis department were originally only for the board of directors and senior executives."
"How was it leaked?"
Zhao Hu paused for a second on the other end of the phone. "It's supposedly an anonymous operation by Xinghuo's marketing department. But nobody admits it. Nobody would admit to something like that."
Ling Yun chuckled but didn't say anything. He printed out the report and wrote four words in pen next to the underlined sentence: "Keep this as a souvenir."
After the report was translated into Chinese and circulated in China, it caused a stir on forums. Someone combined a screenshot of the report with a screenshot of an interview where a Nokia executive said "touchscreen phones have no future" to create a comparison image titled "Nokia's History of Self-Contradiction." After that image was shared on the Spark Developer Community, Wang Jianguo printed it out and posted it on the lab wall, saying it could be used as a refreshing wallpaper.
But what really made Lingyun stop and read it was a review from a German user.
The review was published on Germany's largest digital forum, titled "A German's First Impression of the StarPhone." The author is a computer science student at the Technical University of Munich. He wrote about everything from unboxing to the touchscreen experience, the app store, and sending voice messages to his girlfriend using StarPhone. He also mentioned a friend's reaction—which he directly copied and pasted.
"My friend asked me what kind of phone it was, and I said it was a Chinese StarPhone. He didn't believe me, saying that Chinese people only know how to make socks. I handed him the phone and let him try it. He played with it for ten minutes, then fell silent. Then he said: 'I was wrong.'"
After this post was translated into Chinese and posted on a domestic forum, the comment section quickly garnered over two thousand replies. The first top comment read, "A moment of triumph!" The second read, "Let me show you what 'Made in China' really means!" The third comment was even longer, stating: "Ten years ago, my dad was laid off from an electronics factory, and he said our country's products were inferior to others. Ten years later, I showed him my StarPhone, and he didn't say anything, just looked at the phone over and over for a long time."
When Lingyun came across this review on her phone, she was on a plane flying from Shenzhen back to Jinan. The plane was descending, and the clouds outside the window were breaking into pieces, with sunlight streaming through the gaps and casting interplay of light and shadow on the ground.
He turned his phone screen to show Zhao Hu.
Zhao Hu stared at it for a long time. "This post is better written than the advertorials in our marketing department."
"Because it's not a sponsored post." Ling Yun took the phone and scrolled down a few pages of comments. "Forward this to the entire marketing department. Tell them to see what the users are saying. This is what we're doing—not selling phones, but making people re-evaluate 'Made in China'."
The plane made a dull thud as its wheels touched down. He flipped his phone over and placed it face down on his lap, watching the runway lights flashing outside the window as he backed away. After the plane came to a complete stop, he unbuckled his seatbelt and said something to Zhao Hu:
"Next month we're going to the Middle East to secure the orders from Khalid. We're expanding into both Europe and the Middle East simultaneously. The speed at which Nokia and Apple react will determine how long they can survive."