Chapter 204 How Fearsome Was Nokia
The next morning, Su Yuanshan got up early.
Today was the official launch of the GSM network, the day mobile phones officially hit the market, and also the peak day for people across the country to buy goods for the upcoming Lunar New Year.
Turning on the TV to CCTV, Su Yuanshan pulled out the advertising schedule and placed it on the coffee table.
Ever since receiving Wang Rui's call on January 10, Yuanxin had mobilized at an unprecedented level—or more precisely, Su Yuanshan had forced everyone into motion.
Original plans were scrapped. Measures originally set to roll out slowly after the Lunar New Year were hurriedly launched. The entire Mobile Communications Device Division and Marketing Department of Yuanxin moved into full action, even establishing a new Brand Management Department.
All of this was for today.
Over the past month, the Brand Management Department had focused on crafting a brand-centered advertising strategy for Yuanxin. Not only had they refocused their VCD promotion campaign, but they also shifted the major Spring Festival Gala sponsorship from VCDs to Yuanxin's brand itself. Mobile phone commercials would be aired in various prime-time slots today.
Beyond advertisements, the Brand Management Department had engaged in extensive sponsorships: for example, the ACM-YX International Collegiate Programming Contest, the YX High School Student Electronic Circuit and Programming Competition—and they even sponsored the provincial soccer team about to enter the professional league.
Yes, from now on, there would no longer be a Quanxing Football Team. It would be the Yuanxin Football Team.
—When Su Yuanshan first saw this sponsorship proposal, he was genuinely surprised by Wan Yongliang's foresight. After all, even though the provincial team had never won a championship, its best result being third place, the provincial capital was a gold-tier soccer market, one of the hottest in the country...
At that moment, his phone rang. Out of habit, Su Yuanshan glanced at the screen before remembering that caller ID hadn't been officially deployed yet. He simply pressed the answer button.
"Sold out!" Wan Yongliang's excited voice came through the receiver. "In all cities where GSM launched today, the full batch of 20,000 units sold out!"
Even though Su Yuanshan had anticipated this result, he still let out a long breath. "What's the situation on the ground?"
"It's absolutely on fire... and we only bought two newspaper ads two days ago," Wan Yongliang said, pausing briefly with a hint of regret. "But the mobile companies are selling really well too. As long as it had a Chinese menu, it sold out almost immediately. Heh... I wonder what Nokia was thinking, assuming every mainland Chinese had passed English Level 4? Right now, most mobile phone customers barely recognize ABC."
Su Yuanshan couldn't help but laugh. "That's what you get for disrespecting the market—serves them right!"
"But Siemens and Motorola's total sales should have surpassed ours," Wan Yongliang said. "Our people estimate each sold around thirty to forty thousand units. Their pricing is 5,800 and 5,999 respectively, squeezing us right in the middle."
Su Yuanshan thought for a moment and smiled. "That's acceptable. From 5,500 to 6,000 is still the same price range. Plus, at sales halls, the pricing is mainly controlled by the mobile company. Once our production scales up and the project to replace old handsets with new ones starts, mobile companies will likely run promotions and lower prices. Our products, being sold through our own channels, will give us more flexibility."
"Exactly. By the way, how's the progress at Zhongxin?"
"Should be soon. I'll call to check—have you reported to President Chen yet?"
"Not yet. I'll call her right away."
After ending the call, Su Yuanshan glanced at his phone, feeling a bit annoyed that the first incoming call on what might become a lifelong number had been from a rough guy like Wan Yongliang...
And then he remembered that the first call he had made out was to Wang Chaoxin—and felt even worse.
Still, checking in with Wang Chaoxin was necessary.
—With channel sales already booming, the key now was production capacity and brand positioning, and Zhongxin was crucial for that.
At this point in time, mobile phones didn't yet have highly integrated baseband chips or complete solutions, so it was hard to distinguish clearly between high-end, mid-range, and low-end models. Most designs and technologies were similar.
Right now, it was all about competing on functionality and appearance—hence the term "feature phones."
Since Yuanxin planned to develop a dual-brand strategy, they couldn't just slap a different casing on the same device and call the uglier one Zhongxin and the prettier one Yuanxin. Consumers weren't fools.
Differentiation had to be real.
Thus, although the underlying design was the same, Yuanxin had redesigned the PCB, used fewer expensive imported components, and incorporated more domestic parts.
This way, the phone tentatively named "Qunxing 338" would be priced at 3,999 yuan and sold exclusively through operator channels—it was designed to disrupt the market.
(Note: Back then, phones weren't as outrageously expensive as many think—what made them costly was the network connection fee. For example, Motorola's GC87C, produced in Tianjin in 1995, cost just over 4,000 yuan for the handset, but network fees were nearly 6,000 yuan.)
(Note 2: "Fully Chinese" phones and "Chinese menus" are two different things. A fully Chinese phone could edit Chinese SMS and input Chinese names. A Chinese menu just meant the UI was in Chinese—like the difference between a full Chinese version and a localization patch.)
...
Su Yuanshan spent the entire Spring Festival period busy.
Apart from the traditional New Year greetings, most of his time was spent closely monitoring the design progress of Yuanxin's next mobile phone.
Since Motorola, Siemens, Ericsson, and other giants had launched their phones last year without deviating much from historical trends, it signaled something crucial—there likely wouldn't be any major shifts this year either.
After all, consumer aesthetics weren't something that changed easily, even under the influence of a butterfly's wings.
This meant Yuanxin still had a window where their designs could lead the market.
Moreover, a basic truth about the feature phone era was that phones with external antennas were often cutting corners—just slap on a pole and call it a day.
Thus, when the Nokia 3210 debuted, it completely crushed the competition that still clung to protruding antennas, even approaching the new millennium.
Currently, Yuanxin's phones still featured external antennas too. But Tian Yaoming's department had already initiated an internal project to develop embedded antennas.
At the same time, they had unified their design direction—firmly committing to sleek, straight-bar form factors.
—Lightweight, stylish, sensible keypad layouts, advanced features.
In short, Su Yuanshan was determined to take the path Nokia would later dominate during the feature phone era—but ahead of time.
It's important to understand: in feature phone history, almost every sales miracle belonged to Nokia.
250 million units of the Nokia 1110, 150 million of the 3210, the 1200, the 5230, 130 million of the 3310, and the 2600.
Later generations would look back with awe and ask: How fearsome was Nokia in the feature phone era?
—At its peak, it commanded 72.8% of the global market. Entire countries had 1% of their population working for Nokia. Former giants like Siemens, Ericsson, and Motorola were all squeezed into the "Other" category.
That's how terrifying it was.
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