117: Yangtze River Battery has become a hot commodity

"General Manager Chen, as of 8:00 last night, our red star 3rd generation has sold a total of 870,000 units including offline sales, with the 2+16 version accounting for less than 180,000."

Early the next morning, Shen Rou reported the summarized sales data from yesterday to Chen Chen.

"Our red star bracelet has sold 130,000 units online; the offline data has not been summarized yet. The Pro version accounts for 20%, which is nearly 30,000 units."

"Only the situation with the robot vacuum is not particularly ideal, with first-day sales data of only over 7,000 units."

After Shen Rou closed the folder, Chen Chen said, "Hmm, it's within expectations. Reaching 7,000 units in first-day sales is already a pretty good result."

It's just that the bracelet wasn't as popular as Chen Chen imagined. He anticipated that the bracelet would have at least 200,000 to 300,000 in sales upon release; he didn't expect the first-day sales to only be over 100,000.

However, it's understandable. It's only 2013 now, and the bracelets from major leading companies won't be on the market until at least the end of the year or next year.

Red Star is still a pioneer in making bracelets and needs the market to ferment. Chen Chen is still quite confident about the overall sales. Even if we don't talk about tens of millions of units, selling a few million units a year is still achievable.

"General Manager Chen, both the Fruit Company and DJI sent letters of visit this morning, wanting to discuss cooperation matters with you."

"The Fruit Company again?"

Last time, the vice president of Fruit China had already come to Red Star once, wanting to have Red Star join the Fruit Company's supply chain, but they couldn't reach an agreement.

Moreover, last time Chelson came in a personal capacity and could not represent the Fruit Company, so he couldn't make decisions on many things.

This time, since the Fruit Company is getting involved personally, I'm afraid I really need to carefully consider how to respond.

Chen Chen has always been very conflicted about joining the Fruit Company's supply chain.

If Yangtze River Energy becomes a supplier for the Fruit Company, the benefit is that there will be no shortage of orders. Although there is no shortage of orders now, more orders are beneficial for the company's development.

And if we can use the Fruit Company's money to expand the company, it can allow Yangtze River Energy to develop rapidly, and we can also earn generous profits by relying on the Fruit Company's orders.

You have to know that their shipment volumes are in the hundreds of millions.

Another point where Chen Chen is conflicted is that the Yangtze River Battery belongs to Red Star's world-leading technology. Supplying it to the Fruit Company won't be beneficial for the Kunpeng mobile phone to break into the high-end market in the next year or two, as the Kunpeng mobile phone would lose a huge selling point.

Therefore, Chen Chen is particularly conflicted. They held several internal meetings, but everyone couldn't reach a conclusion.

Chen Chen had asked the battery research lab if the Yangtze River Battery could reach its maximum theoretical energy density within the next two years. If it could, then they would join the Fruit Company's supply chain; two years later, they could perform a technical update and launch a battery with higher energy density than the existing Yangtze River Battery, so they wouldn't have to worry about the Apple phone using it.

The person in charge told Chen Chen that the current Yangtze River Battery still has a certain gap from the theoretical value, and it will probably take some time to reach the theoretical data.

"Reply to the Fruit Company, say the end of next month."

Chen Chen decided to delay for a while and have another discussion within the company during this period.

"General Manager Chen, what about General Manager Zheng of DJI?"

Chen Chen had only met Zheng Jiang once, when they signed the investment agreement with DJI. Last year, Red Star invested 30 million us dollars, more than 200 million rmb, into DJI, obtaining a 24% stake. For a startup company, this could be considered a significant premium.

Chen Chen didn't care. No one knew better than him how powerful DJI's future development would be. Since he had the opportunity to invest, he naturally wanted to acquire as much equity as possible. The reason DJI was able to accept Red Star's investment was, first, because Red Star gave way too much, and second, because the agreement stated that Red Star would not participate in DJI's management.

These two points made Zheng Jiang decide to accept Red Star's investment. Besides Zheng Jiang, as the founder, holding the most at 57%, there were also several co-founders holding 18%, as well as a portion held by state-owned capital. It could be said that Red Star was the largest institutional shareholder besides Zheng Jiang.

As for the "Two Mas" and Sequoia Capital from the original history, since DJI did not initiate a second round of financing, they temporarily had no opportunity to enter this future unicorn company.

Even if DJI wanted to raise funds again, Red Star had the right of first refusal for follow-on investment.

"Ask Zheng Jiang if he has time the day after tomorrow."

"Alright, General Manager Chen."

Zheng Jiang coming to find him was probably also for the Yangtze River Battery. After all, if drones want longer battery life, they need batteries with higher energy density. The polymer batteries currently on the market have improved in lifespan, but their energy density is still just average. The Yangtze River Battery, however, combines the advantages of high energy density and light weight, so it is definitely the best choice for DJI drone batteries.

As for the high-voltage batteries and cobalt batteries that DJI would use in the future, the current prices are still very high.

As for DJI, Chen Chen didn't mind supplying them with battery cells. They were both Chinese companies, and it was a company he had invested in, so there was no reason to refuse. Moreover, DJI couldn't use too many batteries right now, so squeezing out a little production capacity would be enough for them to use.

Huawei wanted to use Red Star's Yangtze River Battery, and Lei Jun from Xiaomi had also spoken to him on the phone wanting to purchase Yangtze River Battery. Added to that was the Fruit Company, and now DJI. It seems that in the next one to two years, he really needed to expand Yangtze River Energy.

Once Red Star's second-generation Yangtze River Battery was developed, he could open up supply to these manufacturers, make a huge profit, and lay the foundation for future new energy vehicles.

As for Samsung, forget it. If he supplied them with batteries, it would break the course of history.

If possible, Chen Chen didn't even want to conflict with Samsung now and put pressure on them.

Wouldn't supplying them with batteries mean that the Note 7 explosion incident that existed in original history wouldn't happen?

Chen Chen was planning to strike a fatal blow when the Samsung explosion incident occurred.

As for Red Star's next strategic goal, it was the offline and international markets. Currently, Red Star was essentially still an online mobile phone company, and selling mobile phones was also mainly online.

For a mobile phone company that relied mainly on an online model to truly transition to offline, it not only needed sufficient financial strength but also needed time to lay out its strategy.

It is 2013 now, and laying out the offline market is basically not too late. Red Star is currently not short of money and has enough time. Chen Chen expects to use two years to lay out the offline market, and he will be able to gain a certain market share in the offline market.

On the contrary, Chen Chen didn't really want to go to the Red Star press conference held in Munich, Germany in December.