Regarding this result, the Illusion Computer originally had no different attitude, because no matter how the market changed, as long as they could purchase computer components at a normal price, it would have almost no impact on Illusion Computer.
However, as time went by, Illusion Computer suddenly found that reality was not like this, and it was still in a very bad situation.
The specific reason has actually been mentioned before, which is that Jiangnan Group forcibly required all components that used Jiangnan Group's technology authorization to be placed on the external procurement platform of the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Alliance for sale, and all product prices must be public and transparent.
You can set your component product prices very high or very low; these are all fine. Then your sales must follow your pricing. If you offer a large procurement discount, then that discount must also be clearly stated on the platform.
And most importantly, all financial flows must go through the platform. Jiangnan Group and the Alliance will not take a single dollar from it, but not a single dollar can bypass the platform for accounting.
Once discovered, it will be deemed a violation of the regulations of the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance, and then the company will be forcibly expelled from the alliance.
And because all technology authorizations are conducted through the alliance, once expelled from the alliance, not only will all previous technology authorizations be canceled, but it will also be difficult to trade with other companies within the alliance, which is a fatal blow to many companies.
In short, as an electronics company, if it cannot join the alliance, whether domestic or foreign, it will almost be impossible to survive in the industry.
Yes, that's right, even foreign related enterprises must join the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance at this time. Even if they join as observers, they must join before they can enjoy the various policies and benefits within the alliance.
Because Huaxia basically controls 80% of the production and circulation of electronic products at this time, if an electronics company does not join the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance, it is equivalent to cutting itself off from the entire industry chain.
So, even proud companies like Apple and Microsoft are currently observer members of the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance.
As for the rule that all financial flows must go through the alliance, it was established in the second year after the alliance was founded.
The reason is also very justifiable. Because the alliance involves a large amount of free technology authorization and various proportions of procurement discounts, companies joining the alliance can enjoy huge benefits.
However, if some companies with malicious intent use these benefits to secretly harm the interests of other alliance members, it would be a huge damage to the alliance.
The simplest example is that a company enjoys some free technology authorization from some companies within the alliance, but then secretly sells products produced with these technology authorizations to competitors of the company that provided the technology. Wouldn't this cause those companies willing to contribute technology for free to suffer great damage?
Therefore, the alliance requires all financial flows and transactions to be conducted through the alliance framework. In any case, the alliance will not charge any commissions on these transactions, but only to ensure that both parties to the transaction have not violated the alliance's regulations. This is very reasonable, right?
At the same time, after this regulation has been implemented for more than ten years, although many companies within the alliance feel that this regulation is troublesome and will hinder many private transactions,
Conversely, this regulation will also hinder competitors from engaging in some unfair transactions. Then both parties will compete in a fair environment, which is a very good thing for their own companies. Therefore, over time, all companies within the alliance have tacitly accepted this regulation and do not think there is any problem with it.
Previously, Illusion Computer was also an alliance member, but because most of its components were purchased from abroad, it did not purchase many components through the alliance platform, so it did not personally experience the impact of this regulation.
However, since Lingyun Computer had to purchase almost all of its components through the alliance, it felt the enormous impact of this regulation.
And this biggest impact is that Illusion Computer can no longer play the pricing game. The issues of procurement by institutions and enterprises have been discussed before and will not be repeated here.
However, gradually, the impact of this regulation also emerged in the personal computer market. The most core and fatal impact is that the manufacturing cost of all computers is completely public, and there are no secrets from users.
In this era, computers have become very efficient modular products.
The host of a personal computer is basically divided into eight major modules: chips, motherboards, memory, hard drives, cooling, graphics cards, power supplies, and cases.
If more are required, optical drives and professional network cards can be added, for a total of 10 different modules.
A computer user only needs to go online and purchase these 10 modules separately, and then assemble them together to build a computer themselves.
Of course, different chips require corresponding motherboards, but that is the only limitation. Most other modules are generally universal.
So consumers can now log in to the official website of the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance and directly calculate the production cost of the computer configuration they want to purchase.
Of course, users have never expected to buy a computer at the production cost price, but they at least know the cost of the computer they are buying and how much premium they can accept.
At the same time, with the continuous development of online media, many professional self-media outlets that specialize in evaluating entire computer systems have emerged, dedicated to evaluating the prices of various brands of entire computer systems.
If you are unwilling to check the ex-factory prices of these computer accessories, these self-media accounts will help you check them, and after checking, they will also help you calculate how much profit these entire computer system brands have made on a computer.
As a result, the entire market for complete computer systems in Lingyun has fallen into a rather brutal competition. Some computer brands adopt price war tactics, using the lowest prices to win the hearts of consumers.
Some brands also try their best to build themselves into high-end brands and use brand value to increase premiums, and so on.
However, Illusion Computer found that both of these strategies seemed unworkable in the personal computer market.
In the previous business operations, with various scandals being exposed, the reputation of Illusion Computer was basically completely ruined. The Illusion Computer brand almost had no brand value in the minds of consumers.
Therefore, if Illusion Computer still wants to sell at a high price by relying on its brand, the individual user market will not pay any attention.
But what if it adopts a low-price strategy?
This is still not feasible, even though Illusion Computer has always followed this path.
In fact, in the traditional computer industry using Windows systems, the price of Illusion Computer is in the middle to lower range of the entire industry.
Excluding those computers specifically sold to institutions and private enterprises at exorbitant prices, the computers offered by Illusion Computer to the personal user market still have considerable advantages in terms of price. Among brands of complete computer systems with the same configuration, the price of Illusion Computer is basically the lowest.
So even though Illusion Computer's reputation was notorious later, its sales in the personal user market were still far ahead. Take laptop computers for example, the reason why Lenovo's Rescuer series can sell so well is fundamentally because they have indeed achieved very affordable prices.
But this is not because Illusion Computer is not making profits and chooses to pursue a route of low profits and high sales.
Instead, it is because Illusion Computer controls a large number of orders and has stronger bargaining power, allowing it to obtain more favorable procurement prices from upstream companies.
In any case, parts that other brands need to spend $20 to purchase, Illusion Computer only needs $12. Through this method, even if the price of Illusion Computer's complete computer systems is very low, its profit still far exceeds that of other brands. This is the fundamental reason why Illusion Computer can grow bigger and bigger, it is truly the capital crushing of large enterprises against small enterprises.
At the same time, this is also why many small enterprises praise the framework policies of the Huaxia Electronic Technology Industry Development Alliance. This means that the bargaining power of competitors is limited.
And those upstream suppliers are also very satisfied with this framework policy, which means that the other party cannot arbitrarily suppress prices by virtue of its scale advantage.
But Illusion Computer is not satisfied, because they can no longer produce the low-priced and discounted products they used to.
As a large enterprise, various forms of internal waste costs are naturally endless. At the same time, it supports a large number of employees, and these employees directly increase the operating costs of Illusion Computer.
Originally, these operating costs could be offset by its own scale advantage.
But when the scale advantage is completely offset by this framework policy, the operating costs become extremely large.
Moreover, those small complete computer system manufacturers use more crazy methods and prices to compete for the market, offering products with a premium of only about 5% above the procurement cost to impact the market.
A small complete computer system manufacturer, with a premium of only 5%, may still have a certain profit margin, because they do not have too much labor costs. They only need a factory for assembly and an e-commerce department to put the products on the internet for sale.
But Illusion Computer cannot. Illusion Computer not only needs factories for assembly, but also a large number of executives for meetings, a large number of middle management personnel to assign tasks, and a large number of grassroots employees to do various meaningless and necessary but unperformed jobs.
Let alone a 5% premium, even a 20% premium would not be enough to cover Illusion Computer's operating costs.
So the new quarterly financial report that Yang Yuan saw was very desperate. Not only were the institutional and enterprise procurement markets occupied by a large number of newcomers, but the pace of encroachment on the domestic personal computer market was even more frenzied.
No one is willing to buy the complete computer systems launched by Illusion Computer, because online, computers with the same configuration but different brands are hundreds of dollars cheaper. So why wouldn't I buy the cheaper one?
If Illusion Computer had brand value, it would be fine, but the problem is that the name of Illusion Computer has been completely ruined in China, and the brand value of Illusion Computer is basically a joke in the eyes of these people.
Therefore, Illusion Computer's financial report for this quarter was undoubtedly a loss, and the loss reached about 15%.