With the PR teams of five major home appliance companies joining forces online, public opinion over the alleged theft of laboratory data by Shenma Technology Company and Samsung had completely turned around.
Shenma Technology Company's new product had doubled in performance once again. Combined with the powerful Phantom TV System 2.0, it had issued Samsung a bold challenge: a wager. Samsung had gone half a day without responding, making netizens realize that Samsung was the truly despicable company!
Samsung immediately stopped funding Shenma Technology's online PR campaign, causing the number of posts and paid shills to plummet. Within just a few hours, the once-boisterous discussion had died down.
On top of that, Samsung had voluntarily deleted its Weibo posts, videos, and other content accusing Shenma Technology Company. It was as if none of it had ever happened!
Even as netizens hurled abuse at it, Samsung was determined to keep its head down, say nothing, and play dumb!
With this approach, the truth might eventually be buried beneath other news stories circulating online.
That was how all the juicy gossip and breaking news online worked: it arrived quickly and vanished just as fast, forgotten in the blink of an eye!
At most, outraged consumers would curse Samsung for being shameless and despicable for a few days. But with Samsung keeping its head down, even the cursing would soon die down.
At Samsung, the company's top executives had gathered for another meeting.
This time, the meeting was about Samsung's next course of action. The company's executives had already given the order: there was no way they could outdo Shenma Technology Company's products.
They had originally hoped to use fabricated lies to accuse Shenma Technology Company and gain an advantage in court, since the company had no legal department of its own. But now Shenma Technology Company had enlisted the legal departments of several major home appliance companies to represent it in the lawsuit against Samsung.
Against professional legal teams, Samsung's fabricated lies meant little. They might even give the other side an opportunity to turn the tables and sue Samsung.
All Samsung could do was keep a low profile. A few months from now, it could go back to selling products and making money as usual. As for Shenma Technology Company's challenge to release competing products, Samsung could only pretend it hadn't seen it.
Who knew how much Samsung had spent, or how many people and resources it had marshaled, to crack the first two generations of the Phantom Projector?
And cracking the Phantom Projector Super Edition a second time was simply impossible!
At the Samsung executives' meeting, several senior technical engineers who had been summoned to report were briefing them on the latest research into the Phantom Projector Super Edition.
As soon as the Phantom Projector Super Edition was released, Samsung had managed to get its hands on several units. The technicians who had successfully cracked the Phantom Projector's driver before formed a team and took the devices apart to study them. They all reached the same conclusion: the Phantom Projector Super Edition was completely impossible to crack!
Under the expectant gazes of the Samsung executives, the technical engineers nervously presented their findings.
"Shenma Technology Company has upgraded the original Phantom Projector's driver. The driver board is far superior to that of the original model, and the amount of data in the driver software has increased tenfold. On top of that, the underlying software system they used to write it is something we've never seen before!
"If the original Phantom Projector's driver software was the number one, Samsung only needed to figure out how to write that number to crack it.
"But the new Phantom Projector's driver system from Shenma Technology Company is like the numbers one through ten. We might be able to learn how to write any single number, even if it took us ten times as long as before.
"But those ten numbers alone aren't enough to recreate the new Phantom Projector's driver. We'd have to arrange the numbers one through ten into the correct ten-digit answer—and there's only a one-in-a-billion chance of getting it right!
"It's practically impossible. Given Samsung's current technology, even if we studied it for another hundred or two hundred years, we still wouldn't crack it!
"The core technology is right there, and Shenma Technology Company still hasn't even patented it. But there's absolutely no formula that could be used to crack it."
After hearing the engineer's simple explanation, one of the Samsung directors asked in confusion, "How did that young man manage to do it?"
The engineers exchanged glances and replied helplessly.
"We'd very much like to know that ourselves..."
"Compared to him, we're like kindergarten children learning one plus one, while he's a mathematician working on the world's most advanced problems. The gap between us is like heaven and earth!"
"You could even say we technicians are like monkeys who spent countless hours learning that one plus one equals two, while he's a human genius. He only needs to study a math problem once to understand it!"
"That kind of genius is terrifying!"
One of the directors delivered the final verdict. "So you're saying there's absolutely no way to crack it?"
Technical Engineer: "That's right. With our company's current technology, there's no chance at all—not even with a supercomputer. Maybe we could try with future technology, like a mature quantum computer!"
The chairman rubbed his temples and said to the engineers, "All right, understood. You can leave now..."
The engineers left, but the meeting continued as Samsung's executives shared their opinions.
"Cracking their technology again is impossible. Our priority now is to seize the global market as quickly as we can."
"Shenma Technology Company has partnered with five major home appliance companies in Daxia Country to manufacture the Phantom Projector. In just ten days, they'll be able to make substantial upgrades to their production capacity.
"With five major home appliance companies and their numerous factories in Daxia Country, the Phantom Projector's production capacity will increase dramatically. That's the biggest threat facing Samsung.
"If we mishandle the global market for televisions, projectors, and displays, Samsung could lose it!
"For Samsung, that would be like having an arm cut off. The pain would be excruciating."
"As for what comes next, we can forget about the projector market in Daxia Country. Samsung should withdraw from the competition there entirely and let them have their share of the pie. Hopefully, once they've eaten their fill of the Daxia market, they'll turn their attention to the rest of the world.
"At the same time, Samsung must get its own projector production line up and running as quickly as possible. Products, products—without products, we can't make money. All the technology we spent so much time, resources, and money cracking has to make us money. Otherwise, we'll have taken a loss for nothing.
"The patent we managed to register will become a useless piece of paper, too.
"The Phantom Projector is an entirely new product in the international market. If Samsung can quickly make a similar product and launch it worldwide, we can make money.
"We're in a race against time, so everyone needs to keep a close eye on things over the next few days.
"We need to use our projector to break into the international market and build a reputation. That's the only way we'll be able to face the Phantom Projector from Shenma Technology Company when it comes storming in behind us."
One of Samsung's senior executives sighed.
"I just hope Shenma Technology Company's partnership with the major home appliance companies is only for manufacturing the Phantom Projector, and not for selling it. If Shenma Technology Company sells the product itself, it won't pose a threat to Samsung.
"Or perhaps the companies have agreed in principle to sell the Phantom Projector, but Shenma Technology Company is an inexperienced company with no infrastructure. It might get bogged down in the business side of things for a long time, sorting out sales commissions, investing in sales channels, and dealing with all sorts of other issues.
"Preliminary talks, market research, negotiations over component prices, contract signings, production-line upgrades—all that takes time. I hope Shenma Technology Company and the major home appliance companies fail to reach an agreement, giving Samsung more time."
"What we fear most is that Shenma Technology Company will only supply the Phantom Projector's key components and leave everything else to the major home appliance companies—from production to sales. Shenma Technology Company would simply be an upstream component supplier. That would be the worst-case scenario we can imagine.
"In that case, Samsung would have to face Phantom Projectors made by several major home appliance companies in Dasha Kingdom head-on in the international market. It would be a nightmare!
"With the Phantom TV System 2.0, the Phantom Projector's performance is already far superior to anything Samsung can manufacture."
Time was money. Though no one said it aloud, Shenma Technology Company, the five major home appliance companies in Dasha Kingdom, and Samsung Group were quietly racing to produce their respective products.
Every company wanted to be the first to get its product onto the international market, that untapped territory, and gain the advantage of launching first.
Technicians at the various companies worked around the clock to improve their production lines.
Seven days flew by.
On the seventh day after Shenma Technology Company announced its latest product, Samsung drew on its ability to mobilize resources within South Korea and its vast pool of talent to become the first to manufacture a projector. It launched its own projector on the international market.
Its specifications were on par with the first and second-generation Phantom Projectors from Shenma Technology Company. Thanks to Samsung's good reputation in the international market, its massive promotional campaign, and its groundbreaking product performance—a true 8K projector—it attracted countless potential customers as soon as it was announced.
Unlike Shenma Technology Company's initial launch, which had been met with skepticism, Samsung's new tech product was announced by a major international corporation, and countless potential customers paid attention from the start.
With brick-and-mortar stores in major cities around the world, consumers had nothing to worry about. They could try the projector out and place an order on the spot!
Within just two days of its launch, Samsung's projector had earned a strong reputation in the international market. Countless people overseas rushed to buy it!
In just over a day, Samsung had sold out of its projectors!
Samsung's projector factories ran around the clock, continuously producing new units.
On the third day after Samsung's projector went on sale, back in Daxia Country...
Over the past few days, with Ning Yifan providing production-line upgrade plans and guiding the companies through several key technical improvements, the five major home appliance companies had gradually started operating their own Phantom Projector production lines.
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