Reborn multinational giant

In the entire Spring Festival Gala, which lasted more than four hours, a total of 4 interactive sessions including WeChat were conducted.

In addition to grabbing red envelopes for the first time, there are also various interactive games such as guessing riddles and guessing the names of songs. After the entire Spring Festival Gala show, the number of viewers participating in the Spring Festival Gala interactive activities exceeded 100 million. The Spring Festival Gala shows are unprecedented in the history of the show.

For this reason, this Spring Festival Gala was also praised by the national audience as a veritable interactive Spring Festival Gala and the National Spring Festival Gala, achieving a true Spring Festival Gala with the people!

Corresponding to the hot topics and popularity of this Spring Festival Gala, WeChat's national popularity has once again reached an unprecedented high!

If we say that most of the people who signed up for WeChat before were only young people, who were "trends" who were more capable of accepting the Internet and new things, then now the WeChat user group has officially begun to spread to middle-aged and elderly groups.

On the evening of New Year’s Eve alone, the number of new registered users of WeChat reached more than 10 million. You know, on the evening of New Year’s Eve from the beginning of the Spring Festival Gala to 0:00, it was only 4 hours, and there were more than 10 million downloads in four hours. It is unprecedented in the global Internet industry!

From the Spring Festival to a few days after the Spring Festival, the download volume of WeChat soared. On the one hand, it was due to the popularity of WeChat on the Spring Festival Gala, and on the other hand, it was also due to the continuous rebroadcast of Spring Festival Gala programs on multiple TV stations. Every time it is broadcast, WeChat is known and understood by more people.

At 15:24 pm on the day of the Spring Festival, Fang Zhe, who was far away from his hometown in Anyang, received a call from the WeChat left-behind overtime team during the Spring Festival. The total number of registered users of WeChat in China officially exceeded 200 million!

From nearly 90 million users during the Spring Festival last year to 200 million now, WeChat’s total registered users exceeded 200 million in one year, and Fang Zhe knows that in the next one to two years, WeChat will not care. The number of users at home or abroad will also see huge growth.

Because in 2011 alone, domestic smartphone shipments have exceeded 100 million units. In the global market, Apple’s mobile phone sales alone have exceeded 100 million units. The global smartphone market has completely ushered in an explosive period. , And what followed was the complete explosion of the mobile Internet industry!

The user growth of WeChat during the Spring Festival also further confirmed Fang Zhe's prediction that after the number of WeChat domestic users exceeded the 200 million mark on the afternoon of the Spring Festival, it did not stop the trend of further growth.

On the second day of the second day, WeChat’s domestic users exceeded 210 million, and on the fifth day, the number of domestic registered users of WeChat exceeded 220 million. On the 14th day of the first lunar month, the day before the Lantern Festival, the number of domestic registered users of WeChat exceeded two. Thirty million!

Until this time, the advertising dividend brought by the Spring Festival Gala to WeChat was gradually released, and the growth curve of WeChat's domestic users slowly returned to a normal level.

The WeChat team has also entered a period of further polishing the new version of WeChat and the digestion of new users. WeChat does not need to engage in particularly large marketing activities in a short period of time, because the demographic dividend of domestic smartphone users has basically been absorbed by the WeChat team. More than 80% has been digested, which means that 8 out of every ten people who own smartphones in China have WeChat installed on their phones.

In the next step, the growth of WeChat will depend on the popularity of domestic smartphones and the further increase in the number of smartphone users. To quickly popularize smartphones and mobile Internet, vigorously develop low-end smartphones is the most critical point.

On February 8, 2012, less than 10 days after the Spring Festival holiday, Fang Zhe, the head of WeChat Zhou Feng, and two executives from Huizhong appeared in the headquarters of Qinghe Xiaomi.

Fang Zhe is here this time, no longer attending the Xiaomi executive meeting as an investor and chief consultant, but specifically as a partner to discuss cooperation with Lei Zong and Xiaomi!

At 10 am, President Lei and Lin Xiaobin enthusiastically welcomed Fang Zhe and his party into the reception room.

Before coming, Fang Zhe had greeted President Lei in advance, and therefore, President Lei had already guessed about the purpose of Fang Zhe and the others.

To be honest, whether in terms of equity or development, the relationship between Huizhong, Xiaomi, Lei Zhe and Fang Zhe is extremely complicated. Fang Zhe is the founder and leader of Huizhong, and Huizhong holds 19% of Xiaomi’s shares. , Is Xiaomi’s second largest shareholder after Mr. Lei, and Fang Zhe is also one of Xiaomi’s entrepreneurial veterans and chief consultant. Therefore, the interests of Huizhong and Xiaomi are closely linked. .

Of course, the relationship is a relationship. From a legal perspective, Huizhong and Xiaomi are two independent companies. Huizhong is neither owned by Fang Zhe nor Xiaomi, therefore, when Fang Zhe and Lei are two When people sit in the reception room as the heads of the two companies, one of the foundations of their cooperation is to fight for the best interests of the two companies.

"Azhe, I just told you that the prototype of Redmi 1 came out. You brought a group of people over without stopping. When the first prototype of Xiaomi mobile phone came out, you didn't see you in such a hurry!" Mr. Lei laughed and teased. Tao.

Fang Zhe smiled and did not speak. He knew that Mr. Lei should guess the purpose of his trip just by looking at Zhou Feng and the others who were accompanying him.

"Is there a plan? Xiaobin and I will take a look first. Of course, you won't have to trouble the chief consultant this time, otherwise I don't know where you should stand!" Lei asked with a smile.

Fang Zhe nodded, and Mr. Lei was indeed a sensible person. He turned his head and motioned to Zhou Feng who was beside him to come up with the plan he had prepared long ago, and handed him a copy to Mr. Lei and Lin Xiaobin. At the same time, Fang Zhe also said with a smile:

"Since I am the chief consultant of Xiaomi, I believe that this cooperation plan of WeChat pre-installed on the Xiaomi series of mobile phones will be satisfied with Mr. Lin and other executives of Xiaomi, don't you think?"

President Lei and Lin Xiaobin did not answer in a hurry. Both of them carefully watched the cooperation plan handed by Zhou Feng. The content of this cooperation plan is precisely the cooperation plan that WeChat pre-installed in all Xiaomi and Redmi phones under Xiaomi's factory. , In other words, every mobile phone manufactured by Xiaomi in the future will be pre-installed with the WeChat application just like the official original application of Xiaomi.

A few minutes later, President Lei looked up after reading the plan and asked Fang Zhe a question that puzzled him:

"To be honest, I really don't think you need to waste money on WeChat pre-installation, because almost everyone who uses a smart phone will download and install WeChat!"

"Indeed, it is not necessary in theory, but, Zhou Feng, you come to tell Mr. Lei the reason!" Fang Zhe was halfway through and gave Zhou Feng the right to speak.

Zhou Feng nodded and explained: "This is Mr. Lei. According to our investigations in China in the past year or so, the penetration rate of smartphones is still less than 30%.

That is to say, among the more than 800 million mobile phone users registered by the three major operators in the country, there are still at least 500 million potential smart phone users and potential WeChat users.

And a large part of these users still have certain cognitive barriers to the understanding and use of smartphones and the registration and use of WeChat. That is to say, even if the user purchases a smartphone, he still downloads, installs, registers and uses WeChat. There is a certain degree of difficulty and learning period.

And we hope to pre-install WeChat through mobile phones to reduce the difficulty and reduce the learning period."