Chapter 404

As an important part of American daily life, Los Angeles has never lacked a variety of parties, and there is no shortage of "party creatures" who attend one or two hundred parties every year.

Simon westero's 23-year-old birthday party, of all these parties, is special and not special.

In the luxury house on the hillside of palisade, some people expanded their contacts, some got the capital to boast, and Simon himself got the gift that could be opened for the whole weekend. It can be said that the guests and the hosts enjoyed it.

After the birthday party, the PR of Hollywood awards season also entered the final sprint stage.

Because of the Gulf War, this year's 61st Academy Awards ceremony was arranged on March 25.

Danylis Entertainment's award winning work "dancing with Wolves", which was released on November 2 last year, has been in full swing throughout the award season. After winning a number of important awards at the Golden Globe Awards in January, the recent awards of various trade unions and film critics' associations have also killed all sides.

Dance with the wolf has become the most nominated film in the 61st Academy Awards with a total of 12 nominations.

However, the most eye-catching point is the box office of the film.

From November 2 to February 21 just before Simon's birthday, dancing with wolves, a potential movie that opened 16 weeks without box office blackmail, has accumulated $113 million in North American box office by virtue of the film's reputation and the popularity of the award season. It has become the third North American box office work released by Denise entertainment at the end of last year.

Looking back at the whole year of 1990, among the films produced by danielis entertainment, there were seven films with a box office of over 100 million in North America, including pretty girl, ghost, sleeping with the enemy, ninja turtle, dancing with the wolf, red powder League and kid in charge.

All of the seven films were in the top ten of the North American box office list in 1990. Among them, danilisi Entertainment's separate releases of "kid in charge", "ghost love", "pretty girl" and "Ninja Turtle" also firmly occupied the top four positions in the annual box office list.

With the box office momentum of dancing with the wolves, the film is almost destined to crowd out paramount, who is currently ranked fifth in the total box office in North America. Her film "hunting Red October" makes Denise Entertainment's films occupy the top five box office places in 1990.

In addition, as of December 31, 1990, the total domestic box office of these seven films with box office exceeding 100 million in North America alone has reached US $910 million. Equivalent to 17% of the total North American box office of US $5.26 billion in 1991.

More than ten other films, such as children in the cornfield 2, ghost 3, shaking the cradle's hand, and ten days in danger, which are related to danielis entertainment, have also grossed US $350 million in North America, accounting for 6% of North America's box office share in 1991.

Combined, Denise Entertainment's films accounted for 23% of the total box office share in North America last year.

Moreover, this does not include the box office of movies such as "home by the kid" in 1991, so it is not rigorous.

According to this calculation method, we should actually include the 1990 box office portion of the films such as "flying over innocence", "Batman: the moment of war" and "driving for Miss Daisy" scheduled at the end of the previous year.

Once that happens, the proportion of box office controlled by Denise entertainment will easily exceed 30%.

With the formal completion of equity delivery between danielis entertainment and MCA shareholders at the end of February, in 1991, as long as danielis Entertainment's films can continue to maintain the box office momentum of the previous two years, the company can absolutely control more than 40% of the North American box office share.

This possibility is very great.

Because when other film studios were still releasing "warm-up" for the box office in 1991, Denise Entertainment's first box office dark horse of this year had already appeared.

As of February 28, the box office in North America has rapidly reached $49.69 million in three weeks. Moreover, compared with the second week, the box office of the film in the third week decreased by only 16%, and the long-term trend is very obvious.

In three weeks, the cumulative box office is close to 50 million US dollars. Coupled with such an obvious long-term trend, it is almost certain that the box office in North America of the movie will exceed 100 million.

Also on February 28, the Gulf War, which lasted for 42 days, officially ended with the formal cessation of attacks by multinational forces on Iraqi troops.

This war has made many countries see the major trend of modern war from mechanization to informatization. In the future war, the tactics of the sea of people are doomed to be difficult to play a role. The negligible role played by the Soviet Union in this important regional war further indicates that the red empire is getting closer and closer to collapse.

On March 1, the day after the Gulf War ended, the North American stock market rose sharply. The Dow Jones index and the S & P 500 index all rose more than 5%.Many people thought that a protracted war ended so quickly that the United States, which had collected a large number of military expenditures from European and Middle Eastern countries before the war, undoubtedly became the biggest winner of the war.

It's not just the war that has made the U.S. stock market continue to rebound for more than a month, but the direct war revenue from the military expenditures provided by various countries has reached 19 billion US dollars, which has largely alleviated the growing fiscal deficit in the United States.

Through this war, the Bush administration has made full achievements and benefits, and the domestic support rate is rising.

Simon knows that the recovery of the North American stock market does not mean the recovery of the U.S. economy. The federal economic downturn will continue throughout 1991, which also foreshadows the defeat of the Bush administration in the new presidential election in 1992.

However, the expansion of westero system has not been affected by the downturn of American economy.

As for AOL, as of the end of February, the free trial period for Internet users in January has ended.

Of the 810000 free trial users accessed in January, more than 430000 eventually became official users, accounting for 53%, far exceeding the initial 20% to 30% expectation of AOL.

Throughout February, the number of AOL free trial appointment users dropped sharply to 1.6 million compared with 2.3 million in January, but the number of trial users who successfully completed the access increased to 970000, basically reaching the goal of accessing one million users per month.

The number of users queuing for free trial is more than 2 million.

In addition to at-t, which is still a big Mac after being split up, the number of users of major telecom operators in the United States is basically within 10 million.

Under the explosive trend of the Internet industry, the major operators dare not despise it any more.

In addition to the three regional telecom operators such as Bell Atlantic, which signed exclusive agreements with AOL, other telecom giants, including at-t, have started to rapidly lay out the Internet industry in the past two months, or simply acquired the world wide web access service companies authorized by igritte in their own operation areas, or obtained authorization from igritte to set up their own businesses Its own internet access service department.

Because of the industry trend brought by the outbreak of the Internet industry, Simon's advantage of buying Bell Atlantic ahead of time becomes more and more obvious.

If the westrow system had not mastered Bell Atlantic, the most powerful of the three regional operators, and driven by the huge interests of the Internet industry, even with the constraints of exclusive contracts, AOL would have to make a big compromise if the three regional operators put pressure on AOL at the same time.

Now, Bell Atlantic is firmly on the side of AOL, and the other two companies, which happen to be located on the East and west coasts of the United States, are difficult to unite. As a result, AOL can continue to maintain its advantage in exclusive agreements.

In contrast, most of the Internet service providers in other regions have to accept the "Recruitment" of the giant operators, and they are basically quickly reduced to the fate of being acquired. Otherwise, they can only be crushed by the operators who want to occupy ISP business and cut off the line network resources.

With the outbreak of the Internet industry, igritte's high monopoly on the world wide web technology has gradually attracted the attention of major manufacturers.

Of course, for the time being, it's just attention.

Because igritte maintains a very open licensing posture, and igritte's loss in January was more than 50 million US dollars, and its business prospect is far less than that of ISP business. Therefore, igritte's monopoly on graphical interface browser and igritte's portal services have not attracted the covet of other telecom companies.

It's true that under the posture of sparing no effort to expand, igritte company was only in the first month of 1991. Although its revenue exceeded $15 million, its overall loss exceeded $50 million.

In order to improve the popularity of the portal business in the general public as soon as possible, igritte has invested $20 million in marketing expenses in the past month.

Each information section of the portal digs a large number of News Talents and columnists from the traditional paper media platform to build igritte's content team, and the investment is also huge. In addition to the e-mail service, social network service, online game investment and igrit's own increasing technology research and development expenses and infrastructure expenses, the company finally lost $50 million in just one month.

Of course, in Simon's opinion, this kind of money burning speed is just a small scene. Internet companies that burn billions of dollars a year are not without it. The money that igritte is burning now is far greater than the return Simon remembers from burning money in the Red Sea market of the Internet industry.

As the whole new technology field begins to pay attention to the Internet industry, igritte has accumulated a large number of technology patents and software products in the early stage. With the rapid increase in the demand for IE browser software, world wide web tool software and portal website advertising by various operators, the growth of igritte's revenue data in 1991 will also accelerate.As long as the current growth rate of performance can be maintained, the annual loss of igrit in 1991 is very likely to be controlled within 500 million US dollars, which is far less than Simon's tolerance limit.

Under the trend of rapid growth of users for two consecutive months, in the face of the IPO rumors constantly released by AOL, the valuation of the new technology enterprise by Wall Street investment banks has all reached more than US $1 billion, and the analysts of Morgan Stanley have even given an estimate of US $2 billion.

It is conceivable that AOL's IPO valuation will rise again after the three-month free trial plan is completed.

In addition to the general direction, westero also continues to make layout in some seemingly small new technology industries.

C girl Claire, after showing Simon her business plan, soon set up a card camera company with the senior engineer who left Kodak.

At the same time, Claire also contacted a graphics processing software company that has just been established for more than a year.

The developer of the software is Thomas Noel. Noel first developed a graphic editing software for processing black-and-white images by using apple computer in 1987, named display. After two years of continuous development and improvement, the name of the software was changed to Photoshop, and began to be used in the field of scanners and digital typesetting.

Simon got the news and directly instructed James Leibold to buy out the software.

However, the Noel brothers did not agree to sell the software, but also hope to cooperate with westero.

After several discussions between the two sides, westero invested US $800000 to acquire 50% of the shares of noel brothers. Meanwhile, Noel brothers will continue to master the development of Photoshop software.

Simon doesn't want the professional image processing software in his memory to degenerate into the existence of Meitu XiuXiu, so he instructs Noel brothers to develop two kinds of software at the same time. One is to continue to deepen the professional functions of Photoshop, which will be sold through igritte online software store in the future, and the other is a simplified free version of Photoshop, which is specially provided to Claire's card camera Company as a supporting software.

San Francisco.

Woodside's mountain mansion.

On March 5, Simon came to Silicon Valley again yesterday to attend the monthly meeting of several companies in igritte.

The female assistant didn't squeeze herself any more last night. Simon got up early and ran in the Woodside mountains as usual.

At eight o'clock, back at the villa, Jennifer is ready for breakfast.

As they sat down in the dining room, Jennifer had breakfast and casually talked about her work: "I think igritte will encounter antitrust obstacles sooner or later if it goes on like this. Now you want to build a hardware ecological chain, which will directly touch the interests of Intel, IBM and other traditional technology giants. "

Simon glanced at the newspaper at hand, picked up the cutlery and said with a smile, "you think about my personnel layout of igritte."

"Bartz is in charge of the software business, Bezos is in charge of the network business. And next, Ferguson may be in charge of e-commerce. Well, you made up your mind from the beginning to split igritte? "

"If you don't split it, of course it's better not to," Simon nodded. "But it's very unlikely. The major operators in North America have now begun to enter the ISP business, which means that the expansion speed of the Internet industry will be further accelerated. It's just that igritte is still losing money on a large scale, and many people can't see the business potential contained in it. In addition, the company is involved in a completely new technology industry, and it won't encroach on the interests of traditional giants, so it doesn't encounter too much obstacles. However, when the industry expands to a sufficient scale of output value, we can't expect this state to continue

It's Simon's idea to split igritte from the very beginning, because igritte's involvement in the field contains too much industrial value.

What's more, Simon did this mainly because of igritte's own development consideration. He didn't want igritte to suffer from serious big company disease because he had too many resources. The Internet era has just begun, and there are still too many challenges to face. If we do not want to forge ahead and remain complacent, no matter how many resources we have, we will only encounter the fate of being eliminated in the future.

While they were talking, Simon's personal mobile phone suddenly rang.

Before he could speak, he heard a series of small screams: "ah ah..."

This is Janet's voice.

Simon showed a helpless expression and came again.

Just about to placate, Janet excitedly continued on the other side of the phone: "honey, yes, yes, I'm pregnant. Oh, come back soon."

Simon Leng next, confirm that he did not hear wrong, also subconsciously stand up.

Jennifer looked over in disbelief.

Simon stood across the table, chatting gently with Janet for a while, promising to go back to Los Angeles immediately, and then hung up.Listen to the conversation between Simon and Janet, and you'll understand.

Knowing that Simon was upset by Janet because of her children's affairs, Janet finally achieved her wish before her 31st birthday. Although she had some food in her heart, the female assistant put down the tableware and said, "in that case, let's go back now."