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Chapter 486: Taking Off (Part 1)
🕑 Added 2023-08-22 09:40:24 +0000 UTCTransformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List
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Even if they were reluctant to fail in their attempt to acquire shares in Cybertron Technology, the agreed-upon terms still needed to be fulfilled.
The people from Panda arrived the next morning. Led by Wang Zilong, the CEO of the group, both Panda Weiyun and Panda Security were present, not a single one missing.
"Mr. Sun, General Wang, here's the agreement we've drafted. Your company can review it. If there are no issues, we can sign the contract today."
"Alright, please wait a moment."
Sun Cheng and Wang Lu each received a copy. The newly formed legal department of Cybertron Technology also dispatched four personnel to assist them, drawing on their extensive legal knowledge to ensure there were no hidden clauses or traps in the contract.
It took over an hour to review the contract brought by the Panda team.
Having found no hidden traps or alterations to the previously agreed-upon verbal agreements, the contract was signed by both parties in the presence of a notary public from Cybertron Technology.
The agreement was now in effect!
Wang Zilong and Sun Cheng shook hands, expressing warmth with their words but a touch of bitterness on their faces. "Congratulations, Chairman Sun. From today, we're practically family."
"Naturally, and we have many opportunities for cooperation in the future!"
Sun Cheng pretended not to understand. He knew that Wang Zilong still had lingering hopes regarding shares in Cybertron Technology.
However, he wasn't worried. Putting aside the fact that he wasn't short on funds, the gold and gems he acquired from "Transformers Universe" stored within the Spherical Space amounted to astronomical figures when sold. He had no intention of easily giving away shares in Cybertron Technology.
Considering the $3 billion investment for a 30% stake offered by Panda Group, Sun Cheng thought it was simply wishful thinking.
Compared to the approximately $1.74 billion invested by the three major storage giants, Western Data, Seagate, and Micron, for the development of the next-generation storage technology last year, the results they achieved were minor. Seagate made the most significant progress, reducing the defective logic cells in the next-gen DRAM product by only 7.1%, and improving system stability by 11.3%, with other improvements being marginal.
No storage giant had yet developed a revolutionary new storage technology or innovation in production processes.
In contrast, even though Cybertron Technology might not seem significant at the moment, the revolutionary technology it possessed was worth far more than several billion dollars. It could even inflate several times over in value.
While Wang Zilong was the CEO of Panda Communications Group, he was essentially a high-ranking employee. Before coming, he had been authorized by the board of directors and was limited to a $3 billion investment.
Now that Cybertron Technology wasn't on board with the investment, which they perceived as a significant financing opportunity, Wang Zilong had to report back to the group. The next steps would depend on the decisions of the board of directors and major shareholders.
As Sun Cheng had mentioned, there would be plenty of opportunities for cooperation in the future.
Wang Lu was about to become quite busy in the coming period!
According to the cooperation agreement between Cybertron Technology and Panda Communications Group, the two companies would jointly establish a new venture called "Uimi Technology." They would collaborate on operating the "Uimi Mobile Operating System," based on Google's Android, with deep localization, optimization, and feature development.
Uimi Technology's headquarters would be in the southern city, with an executive from Panda Security acting as CEO and another executive from Cybertron Technology as CTO. The former would hold 70% of the shares, and the latter only 30%.
Sun Cheng hadn't argued with Panda Group about the shares and management of Uimi Technology.
It wasn't that he didn't value Uimi Technology. Looking at the technological development trajectory of the Real World, the future prospects and importance of mobile operating systems were only increasing.
However, the "Uimi Mobile Operating System" he presented was a deeply localized and optimized version of Google Android. Although Android was an open-source system, customization, optimization, and further development required authorization from Google.
While the cost of this authorization wasn't high, the fact remained that the patents for the entire operating system were held by Google. In the future, Google might decide to charge for the Android operating system or even terminate the authorization, posing a potential risk.
Dealing with global IT giants like Google would be more suitable for Panda than Cybertron Technology. Of course, this was just one reason among several.
The inherent inability of "uimi," born from the Google Android operating system, to generate revenue wasn't Sun Cheng's main concern. Based on the trajectory of technological development in the Real World, the importance of mobile operating systems was continuously growing.
Sun Cheng was more interested in Panda's Panda Weiyun.
Panda Weiyun was Panda's cloud storage service launched a few years ago. Although during negotiations, Panda refused to hand over its enterprise-oriented cloud service, what was being offered to Cybertron Technology was the personal-oriented cloud service. For Cybertron Technology, eager to grow and expand, this was still a substantial opportunity.
After all, even though Weiyun had its shortcomings, it was still one of the functional software offerings affiliated with Pandaoo, the largest social software in the country. It had over 300 million registered users, with around six to seven million monthly active users. Although this was just about one-tenth of One Hundred Cloud Disk's user base, there were reasons for this difference.
Panda's support for Weiyun had always been lacking. Weiyun was hurriedly launched to compete with One Hundred Cloud Disk. Its features were relatively limited.
Additionally, to save server space, the free basic storage capacity for new users of Weiyun was only 10 GB. Although it could be increased to 100 GB through interactions with other software under the Panda umbrella, compared to the 1 TB of free space that One Hundred Cloud Disk provided to new users, Weiyun seemed insignificant.
Furthermore, managing the content uploaded by users to Cloud Disk was problematic. One Hundred Cloud Disk, along with most domestic cloud storage companies, adopted a lenient approach—unless the content violated explicit national regulations, even copyrighted films and TV shows were tolerated and shared.
However, due to Panda's relationships with various film and TV companies and online video platforms, Weiyun adopted a strategy of prohibiting the uploading and sharing of content with copyright disputes.
Ironically, over 95% of regular users utilized cloud storage services to store the films and TV shows they collected from the internet, or to exchange and share them with others.
All these factors contributed to the fact that although Pandaoo had the largest user base among social software platforms, it hadn't managed to break into the top three in the domestic cloud storage industry.
However, these issues were minor problems for Cybertron Cloud Disk.
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Next Chapter >>Chapter 487: Taking Off (Part 2)
