Chapter 221 How Hard It Is to Stay Unstained in the Mud
The next day, while Li Yinan led a team to Siam (Thailand), Su Yuanshan chaired the first weekly meeting of the year.
Previously, when both he and Chen Jing were away, the weekly meetings were usually hosted by Vice President Wan Yongliang and Administrative Director Liu Hongyan, mainly because the administrative side had the largest presence in the tech park. As for R&D, Xi Xiaoding would probably just chat casually with a few senior members over breakfast to "cover it."
In modern terms, Xi had basically become a "Zen master executive."
After all, the current R&D projects at the tech park were not time-sensitive like the early EDA development days, where Xi Xiaoding used to grab people by the collar every morning and scold them to push code forward.
"Let's go over the situation this month," Su Yuanshan said, flipping through reports from Xinghai, Meijie, and Zhongxin, frowning deeply. "We haven't had a quarterly summary meeting yet, right?"
"Right. President Chen said she'd do a proper wrap-up once she's back," Wan Yongliang nodded. "Mainly because everyone's been traveling all over since the new year. Old Wang is still stuck in the Special Zone and can't return yet."
Yuanxin's meeting system was similar to that of modern tech companies. Unless it was something special, they rarely had all-staff meetings. Normally, they held weekly status meetings, monthly summaries, and important quarterly meetings.
Each department, especially R&D, also had their own meetings, often small group technical discussions that could drag on for half a day if someone got passionate.
Quarterly meetings were critical because they involved financial summaries, aligning progress reports from all holding companies, and providing an overall strategic update.
Thus, quarterly meetings were usually scheduled one to two weeks in advance to ensure maximum attendance.
"Fine, we'll wait for President Chen to come back for the full review. I'll just briefly highlight some points," Su Yuanshan said, setting down the reports and sipping his coffee.
"The first quarter wasn't great. Coordination between Xinghai and Meijie didn't go well... mainly the problem lies with Xinghai."
He sighed. "Those idiots at idSoftware, constantly missing deadlines—it's exhausting."
The much-anticipated synergy between Quake and VOODOO hadn't produced the fantasy-like results Su Yuanshan had hoped for. Although the products were great individually, they launched about a year earlier than historically, and without catching the perfect promotional window, they had been somewhat coldly received in the West.
In some sense, VOODOO now faced an absurd new rival—PlayStation.
After several rounds of promotions, the PS had earned massive support from indie game developers. Sony's policies were very flexible for non-exclusive games, and for exclusives, they practically threw money at developers.
As a result, the competition turned into PS versus VOODOO+PC—a weird, lopsided battle. Plus, VOODOO had launched a bit late, and once you fall behind in tech markets... you really fall behind.
At this point, Yu Yuru smiled and said, "But at least domestic game companies are slowly growing stronger. They're doing pretty well recently."
"Yeah, it's like we accidentally played the role of Lei Feng," Su Yuanshan said, chuckling. "But this situation also dragged down Meijie, leaving President Chen quite stressed over there."
Wan Yongliang added with a grin, "The Chen family business is massive. Their motherboard shipments will easily exceed a million units this year between the two sides. When I visited the Special Zone recently, I saw they were even getting into laptops."
"Which is exactly why we can't afford to lose money on graphics cards," Su Yuanshan said. "I had hoped to push for dual-architecture laptops—X86+Windows on one side, YX+Linux on the other—but now it's not the right time to mention it."
The so-called dual-architecture laptop was Su Yuanshan's plan: to quietly introduce mobile PCs based on YX architecture running Linux.
Thanks to relentless efforts from Yuanxin's people, their Fly Linux distribution had become increasingly polished, with growing support from various compilers and tools, now capable of meeting basic office and design needs.
At Yuanxin itself, Xi Xiaoding's team had long switched over to Fly Linux, and full adoption across other development teams was just a matter of time.
The sooner they launched YX+Linux laptops into the market, the better—especially because, at that time, laptops were still considered "luxury office tools."
If Yuanxin could offer something cheaper that satisfied office needs, they had a chance to establish a foothold before the laptop market fully matured.
Unfortunately, with Chen Daohua now burdened by the graphics card setbacks—and with Su Yuanshan still counting on him to push the USB standard forward—he couldn't push any riskier projects for now.
...
"Finally, let's talk about mobile phones."
After roasting several partner companies' poor performance, Su Yuanshan's expression turned serious.
"Old Wan, according to the latest brand value survey, Yuanxin's brand hasn't reached the anticipated level. Sales-wise, apart from the initial peak during launch... overall sales have been lukewarm."
He turned to Wan Yongliang.
With Chen Jing away, Wan Yongliang was currently the top executive for corporate operations, responsible for brand management and market sales. With sales underperforming and brand value growth falling short, he naturally needed to answer.
Wan Yongliang pursed his lips and nodded solemnly. "We've been analyzing this since the start of the month."
Su Yuanshan gestured for him to continue.
"In short," Wan Yongliang said, "it's incredibly hard to stay 'unstained while growing from the mud.' That's exactly how hard it is for Yuanxin to stand out."
"We're being dragged down by the overall domestic brand image."
"From cheap black-and-white TVs assembled in back-alley workshops, to basic radios and tape players made in the Special Zone, to random shoe and clothing factories... almost all domestic brands are following
Friends, if you enjoyed the novel, you can subscribe to my Patreon channel.
Until November 30th, get 40% off your subscription and the purchase of the novel.
Read 30 Chapters In Advance: patreon.com/Albino1