America's Road to Fame

Chapter 454 Time Machine Theory
Vodafone is a multinational mobile phone operator, established in 1984, by 1987, has become the world's largest mobile communication company.

If it wants to write a history of growth, there are many brilliant achievements that can be written, but its experience in Japan is unbearable.

This British-born communication giant entered Japan with great ambitions in early 2001, hoping to gain a share of the fast-growing Japanese communication market, but unfortunately hit the rocks.The company's profits continued to decline, and in 2006 it fell into a huge deficit.

Vodafone Japan is a subsidiary of Vodafone Group in Japan, but it does not understand the interests and preferences of Japanese people, and is not willing to cater to Japanese tastes, so its brand image has always been poor.

To make matters worse, as the third largest communication operator in Japan, its network quality is really poor.

In addition, Japan was about to launch the number portability system at that time, and the outside world believed that Vodafone users would definitely flow to the other two major operators in Japan, NTT and KDDI. .

It was under such circumstances that Sun Zhengyi "robbed" Vodafone Japan from Cerberus Fund Company, and spent as much as 118.7 billion US dollars.

Not only that, Vodafone also owed a huge debt of 1.9 trillion yen outside, and now these debts have fallen on Sun Zhengyi, the pressure can be imagined.

Against Sun Zhengyi's acquisition, opposition from the outside world, even within SoftBank Group, has also emerged one after another.

The capital market believed that Sun Zhengyi's money would be wasted. How difficult was the situation at that time?SoftBank Group's shares plummeted 2006 percent after Masayoshi Son bought Vodafone in 60.

However, just like Sun Zhengyi's previous investments, those projects that were not expected to become his masterpieces in the end. Sometimes seeing these experiences of Sun Zhengyi, Chen William can't help but sigh, this little old man is indeed a unique vision people.

On October 2006, 10, just a few months after Sun Zhengyi replaced Vodafone Japan's signboard with SoftBank Mobile, Japan officially implemented the number portability system.

Just the day before, Softbank Mobile was overwhelmingly promoting their "Golden Package" in the media.

All Softbank users who join the gold package can make free calls and send text messages.

Therefore, after the network transfer system was launched the next day, a large number of users switched to Softbank Mobile.

During the launch of the golden package, Softbank also simultaneously launched the orange package and the blue package. These three packages were launched in combination with the time point of the number portability transfer, which was very ingenious, and Sun Zhengyi made a fortune.

However, he did not stop. In January 2007, Japanese mobile phone users discovered that Softbank had launched the most powerful mobile phone monthly package in history, which only cost 1 yen per month. This is the white package.

In order to prevent the loss of users, NTT and KDDI also had to follow suit and significantly reduce their monthly rent levels, while their monthly rents were as high as 4000 yen before.Therefore, the white package opened the era of low tariffs for Japanese mobile phones.

The more important feature of the white package is that the tariff is not only cheap, but also optimized in structure. It is easy for users to understand the free plan in the package, and the charging standard is also clear at a glance.

This strategy allowed Sun Zhengyi to go ahead of his competitors, but he still had no intention of letting the opponent go.

Only two months later, Sun Zhengyi attacked again, launching an "upgraded version" on the basis of the white package. If users are willing to pay double the monthly rent, they can enjoy a discount of 30 yen for 10.5 seconds during the charging period.

Two months later, Sun Zhengyi once again expanded the user base of the white package users, and launched the white package "family version". All family members who use the white package are free of charge.

From the launch of the package, within 10 days, Sun Zhengyi attracted 50 users, and this number doubled after half a month.

Since then, the number of users of the white package has soared at a rate of 100 million per month, which is undoubtedly a miracle in Japan, where the communication market is already saturated.

After Sun Zhengyi's restructuring of the "Vodafone" Japanese business, which was renamed "Softbank Mobile", Softbank Mobile's monthly net growth has reached the industry's first.

In the next few years, the number of Softbank Mobile users increased from 1500 million to more than 3000 million. Softbank Mobile became the number one mobile operator in Japan, and half of the new mobile phone users choose it.

It can be said that Sun Zhengyi's investment has always followed his unique investment philosophy. This theory is called the "time machine" theory.

The so-called "time machine" refers to the different stages of development of the IT industry in the United States, Japan, and China.

When the development of countries such as Japan and Huaguo is still immature, first start business in more developed markets such as the United States, and then return to Japan when the time is right, and enter Huaguo and India. to America a few years ago.

Sun Zhengyi is a person with a great international vision. His ancestral home is South Korea, he was born in Japan, and he went to high school and university in the United States. He also believes that his ancestors are from the same branch as the grandson of Huaguo, so he highly respects Huaguo in his business operations. Sun Tzu's Art of War.Such a unique life experience created Sun Zhengyi's "time machine" theory.

In 1996, the Internet wave in Silicon Valley of the United States began to ferment, and Sun Zhengyi invested US$1 million in Yahoo. After Yahoo went public, Sun Zhengyi only sold 5% of the shares and made a profit of US$4.5 million.

Since the United States is the birthplace of this Internet wave, while Japan is relatively backward, Sun Zhengyi has the foresight to go to the United States to invest in a large number of Internet companies, and the amount of corporate wealth held in his hands even surpassed that of Bill Gates. .

After making money in the United States, Sun Zhengyi returned to Japan again and established Yahoo Japan, with Softbank holding 51%. Yahoo Japan became Japan's largest search engine and portal.

Since then, Sun Zhengyi has invested heavily in Internet companies in Huaguo and India, which are more backward than Japan. Classic cases include Alibaba, Shanda, and Renren.com.

Sun Zhengyi also invested in companies such as inmobi (the world's second largest mobile advertising company) in India.

Sun Zhengyi has a profound insight into the mobile Internet, and he has long foreseen that the mobile Internet will become the dominant player in the future.

Before the birth of the iPhone, Sun Zhengyi once met with Jobs. Sun Zhengyi told Jobs that the era of mobile communication will definitely come, and no matter what, he must acquire a mobile company or obtain a license.

Jobs said to Sun Zhengyi: "I understand, very good, but you'd better get the permit and come again."

Sun Zhengyi said to Jobs: "Sooner or later, I will get the license, or I may acquire other companies. When I get it, or successfully acquire it, just don't forget it."

Then the two parted with a smile.

Then, as mentioned above, in 2006, Sun Zhengyi acquired Vodafone Japan, the third largest operator in Japan, for US$118 billion, and renamed it SoftBank Mobile.

Sun Zhengyi set off a crazy price war in Japan, which quickly increased the number of SoftBank Mobile users from 1500 million to 3000 million. It experimented in the Japanese market with a classic case of how a backward operator can turn defeat into victory.

This time, he set his sights on Sprint Nextel. Obviously, he was using his "time machine" theory again.

Japan is the most developed country in the global telecommunications industry. Japan's three major operators, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Softbank, all have very strong competitiveness.

Japanese operators are much stronger than operators in most other countries in terms of service level, traffic management, value-added service development, and terminal customization.

The competition in the telecommunications market in the United States is far less intense than that in Japan.

Sun Zhengyi wants to buy Sprint Nextel because he wants to transfer SoftBank's experience in Japan to the United States and fight a price war with the two major operators in the United States, Verizon and ATT.

(End of this chapter)