74: Chapter 74 The First Internet War in Africa

"The African social market is currently a blue ocean, but it is too small; it can accommodate at most two giants.

Furthermore, their progress is too slow.

After this round of financing, it's time to let AfriLink, Konnect, and Afro Chat start fighting it out, burning money to grab users. The one that survives in the end will become the true hegemon.

And we are their major shareholder."

As he said this, he paused slightly: "Regardless of who it is, the ultimate winner will always be Huaxin."

...

Having received the money, Chidi immediately began a new round of expansion.

First, he launched a viral invitation campaign: for every new user invited, both parties would receive 50MB of data. This campaign spread virally among transsion s1 users; after all, in Africa, data is money.

A week later, Afro Chat's new user count exceeded 800,000, and total registered users approached 6 million.

But AfriLink reacted faster. After receiving the money, they didn't start promoting immediately; instead, they hired people to update their UI interface once again and launched a free video chat feature (beta version).

In Africa, video calls are very expensive, and this feature immediately attracted a large number of users.

At the same time, AfriLink purchased a featured spot on the homepage of the Transsion store, and their download numbers skyrocketed again.

Originally the eternal third place, they immediately surpassed Konnect to become the second-ranked social software.

This also made Chidi a bit fearful, as he had been too focused on defending against the runner-up.

He hadn't expected the third-place player to be the real dark horse.

So, he gritted his teeth and launched a voice-to-text messaging feature.

This was a feature he had originally reserved for the final showdown.

After all, this wasn't just ordinary voice-to-text; this feature utilized the offline translation capabilities of Taishan OS, allowing users to convert voice to text and send it even without an internet connection.

That's right, it could send messages, making it an absolute godsend for regions in Africa with poor signal.

As for Konnect, they didn't give up either, directly copying the ideas of both companies. They modified their UI pages while giving away registration data and invitation data, all to seize every single user.

The first internet war between the three companies officially began.

Users, meanwhile, kept downloading the software, inviting newcomers, and collecting that free data and various subsidies.

As the mastermind behind it all, Transsion also benefited greatly. Many users, seeking a better experience, purchased the transsion s1 phone directly.

But the battlefield was far from limited to online.

Soon, on the streets of Lagos, the orange billboards of Afro Chat, the red billboards of Konnect, and the blue billboards of AfriLink were almost plastered together.

All three parties employed large numbers of ground promotion personnel, soliciting new users in front of Transsion stores, markets, and university gates.

"Register for Afro Chat and get an official transsion s1 phone case."

"Download Konnect and get a phone case and free phone cleaning."

"Register for AfriLink and get free charging... and free voice messages."

Sometimes the ground promotion teams from the three companies would meet in the same place. At first, they would shout at each other to snatch users, but later, it turned into a very simple and unadorned business war.

They started tearing down each other's billboards, and eventually, physical conflicts even broke out.

The original ground promotion teams instantly became disposable items. Fortunately, this was the African market... In the end, Chidi still bought a small insurance policy for all the ground promotion personnel; after all, he had to cover medical expenses to some extent.

...

Lagos, Afro Chat headquarters.

"Boss, this money-burning is too intense," the CFO reported. "Five million dollars—at the current rate, we can burn it for at most another three months. If there's still no winner after three months..."

"Then we'll raise more capital," Chidi said, gritting his teeth. "As long as our market share remains number one, we won't have to worry about finding investors.

This can also dilute their shares."

He looked at the report on his desk again. Cumulative registered users had exceeded 9 million. Although this internet war had cost a lot of money, the number of registered users had indeed nearly doubled.

Chidi knew that he owed everything he had today to Transsion.

The launch of the S1 made Afro Chat an overnight success, the deep integration with Taishan OS gave them a technological advantage, and Huaxin Investment provided them with ammunition.

But he didn't want to be a vassal of Transsion.

He wanted Afro Chat to become an independent giant, to become the QQ of Africa, the Facebook of Africa.

And the first step was to survive in this Gu game.

At this moment, the head of the intelligence department walked over again with a dark face—though he was already quite dark to begin with.

"Boss, we just received news that both Konnect and AfriLink have obtained deep integration with Taishan OS. They can now also call upon the system's underlying functions."

He finally understood completely: their money-burning war had been initiated with the permission of Huaxin Investment.

But Huaxin Investment, or rather Huang Tianya, was still not satisfied with this result and had pressed the accelerator button once again.

He took a deep breath, suppressing the urgency in his heart, and then called over the technical director: "When will our multi-language real-time translation feature go live?"

"Next Wednesday. However, there might be some technical issues."

"Move it up to next Monday," Chidi said. "Also, contact Transsion's technical team. We need to call their latest image recognition API. We want to be the first to support a 'scan to add friend' feature, and at the same time, prepare to enable payments."

"This requires the underlying rights and also negotiations with major banks."

"Help me schedule an appointment with Mr. Adebayo. I will negotiate it personally."

"At the same time, help me find other capital; we are going to start our Series B financing."

...

Meanwhile, in Beijing in September, there was already a hint of chill in the evening.

But at this time, the internet cafe was still filled with smoke, and the sound of keyboard clacking was still pitter-pattering.

A bunch of internet-addicted youths chose to stay overnight to play games.

In the corner, a young man wearing black-rimmed glasses seemed a bit out of place. This was because he was frowning at the computer screen, and it wasn't because of the game...

Wang Tao, a graduate student majoring in Communication Engineering at BUPT, was very interested in digital products and had created the digital forum "Jifeng Web," where he served as a moderator.

At this moment, he was writing a new long post.

"The Tragedy of Android: Why Android Smartphones Are Always Laggy."

"I've used a TCL Smartphone for three months. The system has some optimizations, but the sluggishness of the underlying Android is still obvious.

Opening apps takes several seconds, switching apps causes lag, and after playing games for a long time, it heats up and throttles... In contrast, the iPhone 3G's system is very smooth. This is the gap between a self-developed system and a modified one."

Writing this, Wang Tao sighed.

He was a supporter of domestic mobile phones, but reality was cruel.

In the 2009 Chinese Smartphone market, apart from a few companies like HTC, most domestic brands were still using Windows Mobile or knock-off Android.

Experience? Just being able to use it was good enough.

"Moderator, are you there? I have something good." The forum private message flashed...