ryethenovel Chapter 480 Year-End Summary
Chapter 480 Year-End Summary
The Xinghuo Group's 2005 annual summary meeting was scheduled for December 28th in the largest conference room at its Jinan headquarters. The conference room was well-heated; someone had cracked a window open, letting in a draft of cold air that made the edges of the spread-out reports on the table rustle. Chen Zhongming stood in front of the projection screen, his laser pointer circling data charts.
"Annual revenue exceeded 18 billion, and profit exceeded 3 billion." He turned to the next page, where StarPhone's sales curve started from zero in January and rose steeply all the way up, stopping at 810,000 units at the end of December. "StarPhone's annual sales exceeded 800,000 units, and revenue exceeded 3.2 billion. The proportion of overseas revenue increased from zero at the beginning of the year to 35%."
The audience was packed. Li Mo was flipping through the Star Core 2 progress chart in a corner, Wang Jianguo was holding a coffee cup and occasionally glancing down to jot down notes in his notebook, Zhao Weiguo had flown back from Guangzhou, and Ma Baoguo was sitting next to him, still clutching the production capacity report from the Shenzhen factory.
"Spark Internet Cafes, including both directly operated and franchised stores, exceeded 1,200, with annual revenue of 1.5 billion yuan. Starlight notebook shipments exceeded one million units, and the Alienware brand captured 12% of the high-end gaming notebook market in North America. Spark Systems' global installation base exceeded 30 million—21 million in China and 9 million overseas." Chen Zhongming put down his laser pointer. "2005 was a pivotal year for Spark's transformation from PC to mobile. We achieved leapfrog development in mobile chips, mobile operating systems, mobile application ecosystems, cloud computing, and globalization."
Ling Yun sat in the front row by the window, holding a glass of cold water. Outside, Jinan's winter was gloomy and gray, and in the distance, the boom of a tower crane swayed slightly in the cold wind. After Chen Zhongming finished speaking, he looked at him. Ling Yun stood up, but instead of walking to the front of the stage, he turned around and faced everyone in the conference room.
"The numbers for 2005 look good. But I want to make things clear here." He placed his water glass on the windowsill. "At the beginning of the year, Qualcomm cut off supplies, but we weren't strangled—because the StarCore 1 stepped in. In the middle of the year, there were attempts at industrial espionage, but we weren't bankrupted—because the legal department and the technical security team held the line. At the end of the year, the US added StarCore to the Entity List, but we didn't stop production—because the supply chain team switched to a backup plan within 48 hours. This year, you endured supplier disruptions, US sanctions, competitor pressure, and media smear campaigns. But none of you backed down."
The meeting room was so quiet that you could hear the wind blowing through the air conditioner unit outside the window.
Ling Yun took a step forward. "Chen Zhongming, stand up."
Chen Zhongming paused for a moment, then stood up from his chair.
"Ma Baoguo."
Ma Baoguo placed the production capacity report on the table and stood up.
"Li Mo. Wang Jianguo. Zhao Weiguo. Jiang Feng. Elder Ni—Elder Ni, please be seated." Ling Yun called out names one by one. Those called stood up one after another. Some chair legs scraped against the floor with a screeching sound, some put down the pens they were twirling, and some subconsciously straightened their collars. Soon, more than a dozen people stood up in the conference room, all of them department heads and core members.
Ling Yun stood before them and bowed slightly.
"Over the past year, you have been the toughest nut to crack for Xinghuo. On behalf of Xinghuo, I thank you."
He bowed.
No one spoke in the meeting room. Some people lowered their heads and stared at the table, some took off their glasses, wiped them, and put them back on, and some pursed their lips and looked out the window. It wasn't the kind of silence born of being too moved to speak—it was the kind of silence that came from having gone through something very difficult together, and finally someone had spoken out in front of everyone.
Ma Baoguo stood ramrod straight, his expression as if he were still on the production line, scrutinizing yield data. Beside him stood Jiang Feng, the young man who had been working tirelessly on the cloud database since returning from the United States; his lips moved, but no sound came out. Ni Guangnan sat in the corner, not standing up. He took off his reading glasses and held them in his hand, looking at the standing young men; the lenses reflected slightly in his palm.
After the meeting, Ling Yun returned to his office alone. His desk was piled high with year-end summaries from various departments; the top one was from the supply chain, with a yellow sticky note on the cover: "Screen production capacity will be short in the first quarter of next year; we need to secure it in advance." He pushed the document aside and opened a drawer.
Inside the drawer was the velvet box containing the cufflinks An Shiyu had given him, with a piece of paper underneath. On the paper was a drawing his daughter had made—a little man in a suit sitting behind a table, with the word "Dad" scrawled beside him. Ling Yun took the drawing out and looked at it for a long time. His daughter had painted two pink circles on the little man's face, probably blush. He reframed the drawing and put it back on the table.
Then he took out his phone and sent a text message to An Shiyu.
"It's the last day of the year. Tomorrow is New Year's Day, I'll take you and our daughter to the park."
The text message was sent, and her phone vibrated quickly afterward. An Shiyu replied: "My daughter asked if we could go to the zoo; she wants to see the giraffes."
"Let's go to the zoo. After seeing the giraffes, we'll go get ice cream."
"Eating ice cream in the dead of winter?"
"Eating ice cream in winter is the most satisfying."
He put his phone back in his pocket, took out his notebook from the drawer, and turned to a new page. He first wrote down the keywords for 2006: StarPhone 2 release, StarCore 2 tape-out, self-developed baseband making the first call, cloud computing SaaS productization, deepening penetration in the European market, and breakthrough in the North American market. Then he paused and added a line at the end: Beware of Apple—Steve Jobs won't just be an observer.
He closed his notebook after finishing writing and leaned back in his chair. Dusk had fallen outside the window, and a long row of streetlights illuminated the park. The crane's boom slowly turned in the night, a bundle of steel bars hanging from its hook, ready to be hoisted again tomorrow. In the distance, the research and development center building was still lit; Wang Jianguo was probably arguing with Jiang Feng about some technical solution again.
Ling Yun grabbed his coat, pushed open the door, and went out. Zhao Hu was waiting in the corridor. "Back to Tangye?"
"Back to Tangye." Ling Yun turned up his coat collar. "An Shiyu and our daughter are still waiting."
The two walked towards the elevator. Snow began to fall in Jinan outside the window; the snowflakes were very small and melted as soon as they landed on the windowpane.
Ling Yun recalled the internet cafe, the broken computer, and the 270,000 yuan of stolen start-up capital on the day he was reborn.
I remember in the winter of 1996, I told Li Mo in my dormitory at Shandong University that I wanted to make something that would make Chinese products shine. Li Mo asked me what that meant, and I said it meant making something that would shut up foreigners.