Chapter 487: Taking Off (Part 2)

Transformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List

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While the performance and optimization of the Uimi Mobile Operating System impressed the Panda Security team, it was clear that presenting just this deep optimization and localized version of the Google Android operating system wouldn't convince Panda to give up on Weiyun.

Initially, Wang Zilong and his team had insisted on shares in Cybertron Technology, even pushing the stakes up to $3 billion. However, Sun Cheng was not interested in this.

Eventually, Panda made a concession. They agreed to let Cybertron Technology acquire Weiyun for another significant reason: the acquisition price.

$172 million, which roughly translated to about 1 billion Chinese Yuan. Cybertron Technology acquired all personal-oriented business of Panda Weiyun and agreed to retain all employees working on Weiyun's operations in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong region.

This was certainly not a small sum.

After all, apart from its number of registered users, Panda Weiyun had nothing substantial to offer. It struggled to achieve a market share of less than 10% against the formidable One Hundred Cloud Disk owned by the search engine giant.

In a sense, Panda Weiyun was an undeniable failure and was even depreciating over time. For the sake of maintaining their product lineup's integrity, Panda probably continued to support it, even though it was a product that required constant investment.

In Sun Cheng's view, acquiring Panda Weiyun for 1 billion was definitely a huge gain.

Although the enterprise-oriented business that actually made money was separated from Weiyun, Sun Cheng's intention to acquire Weiyun wasn't driven by profits. It was about the hundreds of millions of registered users tied to Weiyun through Pandaoo's social software.

Among these hundreds of millions of registered users, over 90% might have abandoned Weiyun due to its poor quality and user experience.

However, Cybertron Cloud Disk was significantly superior to Panda Weiyun. Moreover, the major expenses for cloud storage companies were bandwidth and server-related. This was especially true for larger servers with greater data storage capacity.

As a company with advanced storage technology, Cybertron Technology's operating costs were naturally much lower than other cloud storage companies.

Although 1 billion was not a small sum, Sun Cheng could afford it. However, he had better options.

Cybertron Technology didn't need to actually pay this huge sum. After the agreement with Panda Communications Group, they agreed to provide server RAM storage equipment worth 1 billion Chinese Yuan to Panda Communications at a price 15% below market purchase price. This was in exchange for shares in Cybertron Technology. The prerequisite was that the quality must not be lower than branded products, and they needed to provide three years of warranty service.

For their first interaction with Cybertron Technology, Panda showed considerable sincerity. After the acquisition, when Panda Weiyun was renamed Cybertron Cloud Disk, its social software, Pandaoo, continued to maintain an access port for Cybertron Cloud Disk and allowed Panda users direct access.

Although they initially tried to use this as a bargaining chip, insisting on exchanging shares of Cybertron Technology, they were met with Cybertron Technology's firm stance: they would provide access, but without giving away shares.

After half a month of intense promotion and building a good reputation, Cybertron Cloud Disk had achieved record-breaking download numbers nationwide, despite having only been recently launched.

On both PC and mobile platforms, after a frenzy of viral marketing, Cybertron Cloud Disk's PC version had exceeded 50 million downloads, and the mobile version had reached almost 10 million downloads.

Although some users might leave after trying it out, the market share of Cybertron Cloud Disk in the domestic cloud storage industry reached 3.2% and 1.72% on PC and mobile platforms respectively.

The real indicator of Cybertron Technology's immense potential was the rapid growth of users and, especially, paying members of Cybertron Cloud Disk.

During negotiations, Cybertron Technology had a strong stance, backed by the fact that their paying user base had already exceeded 2 million, with nearly 90% of them becoming Lifetime members. Over 500,000 users not only bought the Cloud Disk Lifetime membership but also purchased additional storage expansion services.

Although Sun Cheng and his team were unsure of the number of members in Panda Weiyun, as the leader of the domestic cloud storage industry, One Hundred Cloud Disk's numbers had been widely publicized, especially during its last funding round.

One Hundred Cloud Disk had about 14 million annual fee-paying users, which seemed much larger than Cybertron Cloud Disk's user base. However, a significant portion of One Hundred Cloud Disk's user base included enterprise users. Also, because these figures were reported during the funding round, they likely had some inflation.

Compared to this, Cybertron Cloud Disk had taken less than a month from its initial testing phase to a full-scale marketing launch.

In such a short time, it had rapidly gained a foothold in China's market. Even compared to the growth rates of some popular mobile apps in the last two years, Cybertron Cloud Disk's expansion speed wasn't lacking at all.

The confidence brought about by this rapid expansion ultimately allowed Wang Lu, who was responsible for the negotiations, to have the last laugh in his battle with the giant Panda Communications. He successfully secured the best terms for Cybertron Technology.

After reaching an agreement between Panda Communications Group and Cybertron Technology, the news was kept hidden for only a few days. Soon, it began to flood various media outlets in China, especially technology-related platforms and IT sections.

The source of the leak was a programmer who had recently joined Panda Weiyun. As they weren't part of the management and hadn't signed a confidentiality agreement, they vented on their social media account: "Tragic news, just five months into my job at Panda Weiyun, I found out that Weiyun is being sold to Cybertron Cloud Disk. The manager informed us the day before yesterday. They're coordinating the transfer of servers and user data to Shenzhen. Today, HR came over to count how many employees are willing to move there. The new headquarters after the acquisition will be in Shenzhen. Rumor has it that Cybertron Cloud Disk is willing to take on all Weiyun employees. For those who don't want to go to Shenzhen due to personal reasons, if they've been with us for more than six months, they'll receive a severance package equivalent to six months' salary. I've been here for less than five months, so I'll only receive a three-month salary as severance. Crying while laughing..."

Somehow, this venting post on social media caught the attention of the media, leading to a frenzy of discussions on IT forums and tech platforms.

"Wait, did Panda really sell Weiyun?"

"It's true. One of my senior colleagues works at Weiyun. They say it's been sold for a billion..."

"Ha, can that insignificant cloud storage actually be worth a billion?"

"I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to pay that much for Weiyun. I used it once a few years ago, and it was so bad. I've always wondered if anyone actually uses it!"

Since neither side offered a direct response, most of the messages that flooded the news in the following days turned out to be inaccurate.

It wasn't until more and more media outlets kept visiting that Panda finally, with Cybertron Technology's consent, published a letter to all its users on the last day of June. It

was a prominent letter on their official website, titled "An Announcement to All Users."

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Next Chapter >>Chapter 488: Taking Off (Part 2)