Chapter 18: The Second Generation Divine Machine Project is Initiated; This Time We Won't Get Involved in Configuration.

In the first-floor conference room of the Xinghai Electronics Factory, the exhaust fan whirred with a buzzing sound.

The once quiet room now felt like a freshly boiled kettle, steaming with intensity.

"Young Master, we've got nearly ten million in liquid cash sitting in our account right now. This time, we absolutely must upgrade our gear!"

Niu Dazhuang slapped his hand onto the tin table, making the tea mug on top jump. The man's face was flushed with excitement, his rough hands gesturing in the air.

"Even though that black gadget is selling well, it's ultimately just a transitional product."

"For our xinghai gen 2, we have to include a large color screen! And it has to be the kind that's dazzling even under the sun!"

Old Li, sitting opposite him, nodded repeatedly, his thick-rimmed glasses bobbing up and down.

"Dazhuang's words are blunt, but he's got a point. All our competitors are obsessively fixated on hardware specs right now."

Old Li opened the old notebook in front of him, pointing his pen tip at the dense data written on it.

"The new flip phone model from Bolang Mobile already has a camera stacked up to three million pixels."

"If we want to establish a firm foothold in the market, we can't be vague about our hardware specs. At the very least, we need to add an MP3 function with LED lights!"

Chu Xuan huddled in his chair, fiddling with a lighter, smiling like a fox that had stolen a chicken.

"Mr. Lu, this is what they call consumption upgrading!"

"If we put it in a flashy colored shell and add these selling points, we can set the price directly at 1,500!"

Chu Xuan swallowed excitedly, his eyes flashing with shrewdness.

"Just based on our current online fame, this wave will definitely let us harvest the roots of our competitors' customer base!"

The atmosphere in the conference room was completely ignited by these words.

From being on the verge of bankruptcy to holding a significant amount of money, everyone's morale had soared, and they couldn't wait to go head-to-head with the big manufacturers.

Shen Qingqiu sat to the right of Lu Jingming, holding a Montblanc fountain pen.

She lowered her head, flipping through the financial budget she had just finished yesterday, her pen tip lightly sketching a few marks on the paper.

"I've checked the supply chain quotes."

Shen Qingqiu looked up, her gaze behind her gold-rimmed glasses calm and professional.

"There are two near-bankrupt panel factories in Shenzhen, and we can push the procurement price for color screens to under forty yuan."

"If we follow the pricing strategy Chu Xuan mentioned, the profit margin per unit for the second-generation machine can still be maintained at sixty percent."

She closed the financial folder and looked at Lu Jingming, who had remained silent the whole time.

"From the perspective of financial risk control, testing the waters with hardware stacking to capture the mid-range market is feasible."

With the endorsement of this Wall Street goddess of wealth, Dazhuang and Old Li became even more excited.

Everyone's eyes converged simultaneously on the end of the long table.

Lu Jingming leaned back in his chair, toying with a black whiteboard marker in his hand.

He didn't join in the laughter with everyone else; instead, his expression revealed an unfathomable calmness.

"Color screen? Three million pixels? LED lights?"

Lu Jingming repeated these words, and a slightly mocking curve suddenly appeared at the corner of his mouth. He stood up abruptly from his chair and pulled over the old whiteboard behind him.

"Swish—"

The black marker made a harsh scratching sound on the whiteboard. Lu Jingming didn't write anything; instead, he drew a huge X, completely rejecting the configuration list Old Li had just written there.

The conference room went quiet instantly, and the group looked at each other.

"Mr. Lu, what is this..." The smile on Chu Xuan's face froze.

Lu Jingming turned around and threw the pen in his hand onto the table with a "snap."

"Competing on hardware specs? That's just trashy tricks that our competitors have already played out."

"Do you really think that by adding a color screen or stuffing in a crappy camera, you can survive in this industry?"

He braced his hands on the edge of the tin table, leaning forward slightly, full of oppressive presence.

"I'm telling you, the real storm is coming soon."

"If we keep competing on this backward hardware, Xinghai won't survive next summer!"

Old Li shrank his neck, intimidated by this aura, and swallowed dryly.

"It's not that ominous, is it, Young Master? Isn't that how the market is played right now?"

Lu Jingming didn't answer.

He picked up the pen again and drew the outline of a bitten Apple on the left side of the whiteboard. Then, on the right side, he drew a small green robot with two antennas on its head. The strokes were rough, but the features were distinct.

"Do you recognize these two things?" Lu Jingming asked, pointing at the whiteboard.

The group leaned in to look, then shook their heads one after another.

Dazhuang scratched the back of his head: "This Apple is rotten, and what's that next to it? A frog?"

"The giants across the ocean are about to come charging in with cross-generational touchscreen smartphones."

Lu Jingming pointed at the Apple icon, his tone cold.

"No physical buttons needed; with just one finger, you can complete all operations on the screen."

"And this small green robot will be open-sourced for free to mobile phone manufacturers around the world, reshaping the entire software ecosystem."

He turned his head, looking at the stunned crowd.

"Compared to this kind of cross-generational dimension-reduction strike."

"The three million pixels and LED lights you're hyping up are nothing but a pile of absolute electronic trash!"

There was a deathly silence in the conference room.

Only the exhaust fan on the wall continued to spin stubbornly.

Shen Qingqiu's hand holding the fountain pen tightened abruptly, her knuckles turning white from the force.

She had spent years on Wall Street exposed to cutting-edge technology news and had vaguely heard that there were big moves happening in Silicon Valley. But she hadn't expected Lu Jingming's business intuition to be this sharp.

"Since the general environment is going to change, that's all the more reason for us to keep up with the hardware!"

Old Li slapped his thigh in anxiety, his face full of confusion.

"If we don't compete on specs, what will we use to go up against those big foreign manufacturers?"

"No, we will specifically not compete on specs."

Lu Jingming turned around, wiping the debris off the whiteboard with the back of his hand, his eyes sharp as knives.

"Project initiation for the xinghai gen 2 is officially confirmed."

"The exterior can be mediocre; we can even keep using plastic shells."

"But it must possess one core selling point that can flip the table on all our competitors!"

Lu Jingming held up one finger and tapped it heavily on the table, enunciating each word clearly.

"Within the framework of the existing old hardware, we will achieve an absolutely lag-free, silky-smooth operating experience!"

As soon as these words were spoken, the entire conference room exploded.

"Lag-free? How is that possible!"

Old Li was the first to jump up, his thick-rimmed glasses nearly flying off.

As an old engineer who had worked in hardware for half his life, he felt like he was listening to a fantasy.

"Young Master, all current mobile phones use the Symbian OS, and the underlying code is as tangled as a ball of yarn!"

Old Li was stomping his feet in anxiety.

"Even that top-tier Nokia flagship from Finland that sells for a sky-high price will still freeze and require a battery pull if you open two extra background apps!"

"This is a chronic disease of the software's foundation; even a god couldn't cure it!"

Chu Xuan also chimed in with a bitter face.

"That's right, Mr. Lu. Nowadays, when ordinary people buy phones, who hasn't experienced crashes or black screens?"

"Everyone is used to it. If you use 'lag-free' as a selling point, people will only think we're blowing hot air."

In 2007, crashes, lag, and pulling the battery to restart were the norm in the digital world. Let alone knock-off phones, even flagship models from big manufacturers costing thousands couldn't escape this curse.

Trying to solve lag without upgrading hardware was like trying to make a tractor run at the speed of a Ferrari. It completely defied basic physical common sense.

Shen Qingqiu put down her pen and rubbed her sore temples.

"Lu Jingming, doing business can't just be based on passion."

She looked up, her eyes showing a hint of helplessness and admonition.

"Research and development for an underlying operating system is a bottomless pit."

"Microsoft and Nokia poured billions of dollars into it, and they still couldn't solve the lag problem."

"Our factory currently has a foundation of ten million at most; what are you going to use to fill this pit?"

Facing the unanimous questioning of the executives, Lu Jingming wasn't angry at all; instead, he laughed out loud.

In that laughter, there was an arrogance that seemed to trample the entire tech circle under his feet. He put his hands in the pockets of his work pants and paced slowly for two steps.

"Microsoft and Nokia couldn't solve it because they were heading in the wrong direction."

Lu Jingming stopped at the end of the long table, looking down at everyone present.

"The giants across the ocean are indeed powerful, but their arrogance is our best opportunity."

He took a black USB flash drive out of his pocket. It had no fancy packaging, and the casing was even slightly worn and chipped.

With a soft "snap," that unremarkable USB drive was slapped onto the tin table by Lu Jingming. Under the dim light, it glinted with a faint metallic luster.

Everyone was stunned, their eyes all drawn to that small storage device.

"Old Li, plug this thing into the computer and call that new girl in the lab over."

Lu Jingming braced his hands on the back of the chair, the corner of his mouth curling into a smile that made one's scalp tingle.

"What's on this USB drive?" Shen Qingqiu stared at the metal gadget and asked cautiously.

Lu Jingming tapped the table lightly with his finger, his eyes playful.

"What it contains is a knife that can throw the Symbian OS into the trash heap of history."