Compared to the sputtering and spitting Ya Lian, Lian Zhong seemed much calmer.
In fact, Lian Zhong was also panicking at first, after all, OO had a bad reputation in the circle at the moment. Everyone said that this company was very aggressive, completely barbarous and unreasonable. Of course, people said that in their mouths, but in reality, it didn't matter, since QQ was the one suffering, not them, so it was irrelevant.
But when the matter reached their own doorstep, they panicked. However, after a few days, Lian Zhong found that the situation didn't seem as bad as they thought, because although their active user numbers had decreased, the quantity was not large, not even 10% of their user base. After rounding, it was equivalent to no loss.
At first, they didn't understand, because they heard that Ya Lian's situation was extremely tragic. Later, their leadership realized that this was because Lian Zhong's customer base was different from OO's customer base.
OO's customers were all young people, basically young people under 30. But Lian Zhong was different. Their users were mostly middle-aged and elderly people over 30.
These middle-aged and elderly people actually had a low acceptance of the internet, and most of them were employees of government agencies. Their computer usage was limited to typing and powering on and off. Learning to play cards and mahjong on the computer was their greatest achievement.
Coupled with their strong conservatism, they scoffed at standalone games and online games, calling them poisonous opium that corrupted children and the worst things in the world, and they wouldn't touch them at all.
On the contrary, playing cards and mahjong were traditional arts and cultural heritage of the Chinese nation. It was completely fine for them to play them online.
In short, it was a capital offense for children to play games after school, but for them to play cards, or even during work, and even lose money, that was reasonable leisure and entertainment.
What hypocrites.
Lian Zhong's core target audience was precisely this group of middle-aged and elderly people, so Lian Zhong suffered little from the impact of the OO game center, because the core user groups were completely different and couldn't be poached.
Of course, as a result, Lian Zhong's small number of young users would also leave en masse. In another ten or so years, when these young people became middle-aged and mobile phone card games replaced computer card games, Lian Zhong's doomsday would probably be near.
But it didn't matter, who cared about ten years from now.
Thus, Lian Zhong's days became leisurely again, until one day, Lian Zhong's chairman, Bao Yueqiao, received a report from his secretary that a person named Liu Xiangjiang, who claimed to be the Vice President of Jiangnan Group, had come to visit.
"What do people from Jiangnan Group want? To show off?" Bao Yueqiao couldn't figure out the other party's intention, but he still asked his secretary to invite the person in.
After a few pleasantries, Liu Xiangjiang got straight to the point and said, "Chairman Bao, as you know, our Jiangnan Group's Jiangnan Computer Technology Service Company has established the OO game platform. Our group is determined to enter the game platform field and integrate casual games and large-scale standalone game resources."
"To avoid more unnecessary competition in the future, I am representing our company to talk with Chairman Bao. We hope to acquire the major shares of Lian Zhong World, and from then on, we will be one company instead of two, sharing resources, wouldn't that be wonderful!"
"Acquire our company!" Bao Yueqiao pondered for a moment, his mind racing.
Bao Yueqiao actually had no particular stance on being acquired, either for or against it, because although he was the chairman of the company, the major equity was no longer in his hands. A few months ago, Haihong Holdings acquired 66.7% of Lian Zhong World's shares, leaving Bao Yueqiao and the other two founders with only 33.3%.
However, Hai Hong Holdings had also clearly stated that they had no interest in interfering with the operations and fully supported Bao Yueqiao, so Bao Yueqiao's position in the company was still very stable.
Whether Lian Zhong World was acquired now was actually irrelevant to Bao Yueqiao. It was just changing a controlling shareholder, and Bao Yueqiao's interests would not be harmed. Moreover, in order to gain Bao Yueqiao's support for the acquisition, OO would definitely give Bao Yueqiao many benefits in private, so the acquisition would bring greater benefits to Bao Yueqiao.
From a heartfelt analysis, Bao Yueqiao actually supported the acquisition. As long as OO paid enough money, he would support it with both hands and feet.
So the key was money.
"I am aware of your company's intentions. Being able to receive the help of your company's vast resources would be very beneficial to us at Lian Zhong World. I personally strongly support this acquisition plan."
"However, as you know, I am only the nominal chairman of Lian Zhong World, and the company's true controlling stake is not in my hands. You need to negotiate with Haihong Holdings."
"Of course, if your company is not very familiar with Haihong Holdings, I can act as an intermediary to help facilitate the contact. However, Haihong Holdings is a very traditional enterprise and does not recognize how much help your company's products can bring to Lian Zhong World. They are only interested in the amount of money!"
"So, can your company tell me how much you plan to spend to acquire Lian Zhong World? That way, I can go and talk to Haihong Holdings and help everyone reach a cooperation as soon as possible!" Bao Yueqiao's words were very pleasant, but in fact, he just wanted to figure out Jiangnan's bottom line price, and then decide whether to help Lian Zhong World sell itself, and incidentally sell himself as well.
"Well, I understand. Actually, I'm not very sure how much our company is willing to pay, after all, no one knows what our Chairman Huang's bottom line is. For now, I can only tell Mr. Bao that we are willing to offer a price of 30 million RMB! To acquire a total of 60% of your company's shares!"
"30 million!" Bao Yueqiao's expression instantly became displeased. He was not satisfied with this price.
In fact, this price was not too low. When they sold themselves to Haihong Holdings a few months ago, they only sold 66.7% of their shares for 20 million RMB. Now, Jiangnan Group was willing to pay 30 million for 60% of the shares, which was already a 50% increase. This was a very good price.
However, Bao Yueqiao felt it was too low, because in the past few months, Lian Zhong Game World's user base had also surged. In just a few months, the registered users had increased by nearly 10 million, bringing Lian Zhong World's total registered users to 40 million. Among them, there were 500,000 member users, and the concurrent online users reached 200,000.
Members were the most proud achievement of the world, because these were real, paying members. These members had to pay a monthly membership fee of 30 yuan to enjoy some value-added services from Lian Zhong World.
Such an achievement was only achieved by Lian Zhong World in the entire circle. Other companies that wanted to open membership services would be beaten down by reality. For example, Ya Lian, after opening paid services, lost more than half of its users.
The main reason for Lian Zhong World's excellent performance was its customer base.
As mentioned before, their customer base was middle-aged people over 30, who were generally middle-class or above office workers. They had money to spend on the internet.
Secondly, Lian Zhong World was different from other companies that sold game cards and charged fees. Their charging method was mainly through phone calls.
Many people born after 2000 might not understand how to charge through phone calls!
In an era without widespread online banking, the charging methods for online companies, besides game cards, were only through phone calls.
The common method was to dial a special phone number displayed on the charging page. After connecting, the person on the other end would ask for the charging amount. You would enter the amount using the phone's numeric keypad, and then press the hash key to confirm, thus completing the charge.
Or, you would leave your charging amount and phone number on the charging page, and a call would come within tens of seconds, automatically broadcasting the charging information. If you agreed with this information, you could press the hash key to confirm, thus completing the charge. Both methods were similar.
A few years later, phone card charging would also appear, which meant that you could purchase public phone cards or mobile top-up cards issued by various telecom companies, and then enter the charging account and password on these cards into the webpage to directly transfer the balance on the phone card into the game.
These methods ultimately utilized telecom companies as intermediaries. Players would pay money to telecom companies first, and then online companies would collect money from telecom companies, thus achieving a relatively convenient charging method.
However, using these methods to charge often incurred a difference in price from the intermediary.
For example, if you spent 30 yuan on phone charges, only 20 yuan would actually be charged to your account, and the remaining 10 yuan would be earned by the intermediary telecom company.
In that era, the appetite of telecom companies as intermediaries was enormous. The most ruthless telecom companies even charged a 1:1 difference, meaning that if you charged 30 yuan, only 15 yuan would be credited, and the remaining 15 yuan would be taken by the telecom company, which was extremely exploitative.
This was also why Alipay and WeChat Pay were able to rise rapidly later. It was precisely because telecom companies were too exploitative that products like Alipay were as pure as angels compared to them.
However, through these methods, Lian Zhong World successfully earned considerable income. Just last month, Lian Zhong World achieved profitability for the first time in its history. The membership fees received exceeded the server and network maintenance costs for the first time. This was completely different from Lian Zhong World, which was still losing money a few months ago.
Those who understood knew that whether an online company could achieve profitability made a complete difference in stock prices. The price of the former could increase by several times or more. Therefore, Bao Yueqiao was now looking down on 30 million RMB.