American Fortune Life

“ Download our software for a fee of one dollar to provide users with refreshing, concise, ad-free products. What do you think? ”

In the conference room, Andy raised his mouth and asked with a faint smile on his face, he wouldn't always let WhatsApp go free. Since there are no ads, no games, there's no way to cash in traffic, there's no profit port, you can't always burn money to earn a drink, so you still have to take the basic fee + value added paid road number.

“This approach has proved to be very effective in practice. Initially, however, some users will inevitably be dissatisfied with uninstalling Watspur, but as our products truly resonate with users, the company will be experiencing a new impressive explosion in the future. ”

CEO Brian naturally raised his hands in favor of his boss's decision to charge money, and went on to burn money, most affected by his company's CEO.

“I also agree that before WhatsApp appeared, users relied primarily on telecommunications carriers, but they did not do well. Many of them charge by number of messages, increase rates during busy hours, or completely limit text messaging.

WhatsApp not only helps users lift these restrictions, but also achieves this at a lower cost. It provides valuable, popular features beyond those offered by mobile carriers, including group chat, audio and video file sharing.

However, in order to avoid a massive offloading crisis, boss, you see, is it free for the first year and only $0.99 per year thereafter? Although, we don't bother competing with most carriers for every expensive messaging package, and our additional features make it more appealing. But users who are accustomed to free lunch inevitably have a rebellion, and although there is only a 0.01 dollar gap between $1 and $0.99, psychologically it can make users feel like it's really small money, not even a dollar. ”

Marketing managers also speak up and report their thoughts to Andy.

“That's a good idea, $0.99, if you can't even afford this little money, we don't want this kind of user... ”

“Indeed, we can only get less than a dollar, much cheaper than the texting package they're using now, and it's powerful, no advertising, and if it's stingy, there's really no need to think about serving that kind of person. ”

The audience in the conference room quickly echoed each other. The audience, more than anyone else, knew the value of Watspur. They had always regarded the original free price as a means of capturing the market and increasing the user base. Only one day, the market matured and the user base became huge before harvesting.

After all, WhatsApp is the most popular and successful in many of the most demanding resource packages and the oldest, cheapest models. WhatsApp's cross-platform operability, the availability of smartphones and feature phones are all its rapidly growing killers internationally. If anyone really feels that less than a dollar a year is expensive to service, they really don't need to serve this user.

Moreover, the impact of charging may not be significant, after all, Watsop's popularity is unquestionable, especially among young users, either because SMS does not have this feature or because it cannot afford so much text messaging. In addition to being particularly useful, these community features have expanded the spectrum of explosive growth beyond the one-to-one connection typical of texting to more than one pair. All of this has relatively low cognitive overhead for new WhatsApp users.

Plus, the registration process is simple and convenient, with users simply confirming their phone number and WhatsApp automatically syncing their phone contacts, which makes it easy for users to switch from standard text to WhatsApp in essence.

Of course, the real key is cross-platform interoperability, enabling friends to connect with each other, no matter which phone, operating system, operator or country.

While Blackberry and Apple are both eyeing the development of Red Wasp and offering their own SMS alternatives, they do not work across platforms. This is a huge challenge in itself. Break down Watsop's established market with a service that is not only more affordable, but also more reliable and functional.

Andy sees that his subordinates basically reached consensus and made a decision without a slight nod, "So, next January 1st, the official version of WhatsApp will be launched, free of charge in the first year after download, with a charge of $0.99 starting the second year, and old users can also directly pay $0.99 in advance for value-added services of our software.

Propaganda must be good, let users know that we charge to better serve them, protect them from advertising harassment, spam bombing. ”

“Okay, boss. ”

Andy nodded satisfactorily, making plans for the next few months, and he could not be worried about WhatsApp for the short term.

Next, his trip to San Francisco left him with an inspection of INS and the top Apple board in the industry.

“Boom!”

Andy, dressed in a high-end fabric suit, got out, and the bodyguard behind closed the door, took off his sunglasses, looked at the Apple HQ building in front of him, smiled slightly, and walked to the ‘infinite loop’ HQ building, surrounded by everyone.

Fifteen years ago, Apple, a big company driving the computer revolution, began to decline. At that time, it had just moved into this shiny new headquarters, a six-built campus, forming an alternative ring. So it's called an infinite loop, and that name comes from a well-known programming error, meaning that the code is trapped in endless repetitions, but nobody seems to know who adopted it. The infinite loop is where Apple and engineers make historic changes, and the source of stories and legends about Apple, many of which are unknown.

Seeing Jobs again, Andy was actually a little stunned, although Jobs returned to Apple after his discharge and showed up at a video conference, when Andy only thought he was thinner, just didn't expect him to be so thin, saw the lean blues on the real person's neck and the thinner figure, and on such a hot day, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans made Andy feel sorry for him.

However, this sympathy was quickly dispersed by Jobs' arrogant look and his untamed, hostile eyes, Andy smiled and looked cold at Jobs, greeted him, shook his hand briefly after the cold, found his place, sat safely at the conference table, and greeted the other directors around him, waiting for the other board members to arrive.

As the world's largest technology company, who really owns Apple? Who the hell controls this company? Why does Andy have more wealth than Apple's market value instead of acquiring Apple directly?

I'm sure many people have questions about these issues and why so many rich people don't buy apples directly.

In fact, as Andy had already said, Apple did not have an actual controller, and it was the company's board of directors that controlled it, not the company's major shareholders.

Why is that?

Because Apple has no controlling shareholder. For many Apple shareholders, it is difficult to use their rights to decide on the composition and decision-making of Apple's board of directors.

On April 1, 1976, Jobs et al. co-founded Apple, which was spread among several founders, with Jobs holding 30% of the shares.

In 1980, after Apple was listed and subsequently financed, Jobs' equity was gradually diluted and control of the company disappeared.

Five years later, Jobs lost his power because of the loss of support from the board, and then after several failed attempts to regain his power, he resigned as chairman of the board and left the company during the year. He could be said to have been expelled.

When he left Apple, Jobs also held 11.3% of Apple's shares, and in one breath, he chose to reduce them to just one share, with a cash hedge of $130 million, symbolizing that the last share of xing was used to participate in the annual Apple shareholders' meeting.

Later, as you all know, the downtrodden Apple company invited Jobs back, King Jobs back, and led the company to success, but he wasn't really a major shareholder in Apple.

The main reason why no one was able to acquire it was because Apple's equity was so dispersed.

Available disclosure data show that Apple currently holds 60 per cent of its shares in as many as 2,440 institutions, with very fragmented equity.

Pioneer USA is Apple's number one shareholder with 6.43% stake. Andy, as the second-largest individual shareholder, held only 5.23% of the top ten shareholders, and held 23.33% of the total, so there are no major shareholders in control of the company based on the shareholding ratio.

For such high-quality companies, there are not a few capital crocodiles who believe they have a keen interest in capital markets to annex their acquisitions, but they also need to be carefully weighed before they act. If you want to be a major shareholder in it, you need to pay more than $25 billion in capital to get 25 percent of the equity, and Apple's market value reached $105 billion in '09, so much money, though a lot of rich people and companies can take it out at once.

However, Apple's cash reserves are growing, and it can be argued that Apple's board of directors has sufficient funds to counter any capitalist takeover of the company and to reject all kinds of "barbarians” with malicious takeover attempts. Not to mention Jobs, an extremely powerful CEO, no one chooses to jump out of the car during Apple's high-speed development, unless it's crazy!