The Aftermath

On the international market, Samsung's projector products were like flowers that bloomed briefly before quickly withering. In less than five days, the Phantom Projectors produced by the five major home appliance companies had replaced them, rapidly becoming the mainstream product and completely overwhelming other TV projector products.

The powerful capabilities of Phantom TV System 2.0 had made Samsung's projectors completely unappealing.

Whether online or in the real world, countless consumers were discussing the powerful features of the Phantom Projector.

When it came to selling products, the five major home appliance companies had methods Shenma Technology Company couldn't match.

The international market was like a gold mine. If everyone's products were roughly comparable, then the various companies were like honest miners, each using its own pickaxe to dig. How much ore they unearthed depended on the pickaxe's quality and the miner's strength and experience.

But if one miner in that mine suddenly had a pickaxe that was incredibly sharp, a fight would break out.

There was only so much gold in the mine. With a sharp iron pickaxe, that miner could kill all the miners still using stone pickaxes, then either keep the whole mine for himself or join forces with a few companies that had equally powerful pickaxes to seize it.

It was just like the transition from the age of traditional mobile phones to the age of smartphones. In only a few years, smartphones had risen, and traditional phones had disappeared.

The same was now happening in the international market for television projectors and displays. Samsung had been the first to launch a projector product, and with its powerful capabilities and iron pickaxe, it had slaughtered the miners using stone pickaxes in just a few days.

However, just as Samsung was turning around to dig up the gold, the five major home appliance companies appeared, wielding steel pickaxes even more powerful than iron ones.

Individually, none of the five companies could match Samsung. But they could join forces and fight as a team.

With their superior weapons, they formed a Five Elements Formation and shaved the very scalp off Samsung, killing it beyond any hope of recovery.

After defeating everyone else, the five miners turned around and worked together to mine the gold.

There was no need to worry about infighting. The five miners came from the same place and had been friends for decades. Even if they had a few small disagreements, those could be resolved. And behind them stood the big boss who had lent them the steel pickaxes. If they started fighting, he might take the pickaxes back.

So, on the international market, the major home appliance companies divided up the sales territories. After defeating Samsung, they moved on to the happy business of digging for gold and making money.

Every day, tens of thousands of Phantom Projectors were sold, and the profit margins were enormous!

There were no product development costs. Aside from the projector driver board, LED light source, and Phantom TV System 2.0 supplied by Shenma Technology Company, the other components in the Phantom Projector didn't involve particularly advanced technology and weren't expensive to manufacture.

A Phantom Projector priced at 6,000 yuan—5,000 in Daxia, with overseas prices slightly higher because of tariffs, shipping, and other costs—cost about 3,000 yuan to produce after accounting for import and export duties, value-added tax, and other expenses.

That meant a profit of 3,000 yuan on every projector sold—far more than most digital technology products could earn!

Compared with the products the major home appliance companies had made before, the difference in profit was enormous. Just look at recent years: every industry had become caught up in a race to the bottom. To sell anything, you had to undercut your competitors while offering better quality!

With Shenma Technology Company's permission, the home appliance companies had even begun discussing whether they should raise their prices a little.

They were making money from foreigners, after all. The higher the price, the better!

With Phantom Projectors being unmatched in quality, they didn't have to worry that consumers wouldn't buy them!

Now every batch sold out as soon as it hit the shelves, and consumers had gone into full-on buying mode.

People in developed countries had plenty of money. Companies from Daxia should be allowed to earn a little more!

The Phantom Projector Super Edition, in particular, cost only five or six thousand yuan to make, but with performance that powerful, surely selling it for 100,000 yuan wasn't unreasonable!

It was perfectly reasonable!

There were plenty of rich people overseas. Maybe they wouldn't even like it if it were cheap; it wouldn't reflect their status.

......

The five major home appliance companies' sales had settled into a steady rhythm. Meanwhile, Samsung's executives were still meeting to decide the company's next steps.

The company's warehouses were now piled high with hundreds of thousands of projectors, but they couldn't sell them.

After the major home appliance companies' move, Samsung's projector sales had plunged over the past two days, down to just a few thousand units a day.

In a market of billions of people around the world, sales of only a few thousand were nowhere near enough—and they were still falling!

Once again, the company was facing a crisis where its products couldn't sell. It was just like before, when Samsung's sales in Daxia had plummeted after Shenma Technology Company rose to prominence. Now the crisis had spread across the global market for television projectors.

Even in Samsung's home market of South Korea, the five major home appliance companies' Phantom Projectors had completely taken over.

Samsung had grown increasingly powerful in South Korea over the years, but that hadn't come without drawbacks. When the company was strong, its relationship with the government had been close. But when Samsung fell on hard times, it was often the government that stabbed it in the back.

For the past few years, the government had been quietly weakening Samsung's power. Now the timing was just right. Since Samsung could no longer bring the government enormous benefits, it made sense to kick it while it was down, let the five major home appliance companies' Phantom Projectors into the market, and cut off one of Samsung's arms.

"If our products can't compete with the Phantom Projector, could we deal with the supply of its key components instead?" one Samsung executive suggested during the meeting.

Another executive asked, "How?"

"Hire assassins. Even spending a few billion would be worth it."

Someone shook his head and objected. "Do you know where the target is? What he looks like?"

"Well, no. But we can investigate."

"That won't work."

"I've considered that idea too, but there are a few problems we'd have to resolve before we could carry it out.

"First, this is exactly when the Phantom Projector and Samsung are fighting for the international market. Samsung is being pushed back at every turn, but if Shenma Technology Company's boss were assassinated and its factory sabotaged so that Phantom Projectors could no longer be made, Samsung would be the biggest beneficiary.

"That would practically be announcing to the whole world that we were the ones who killed him! And we'd have blown up the factory, too.

"Right next door is that ancient and powerful country. Do you think Daxia would just stand by and do nothing?

"That would be tantamount to a terrorist attack!

"Could Samsung—or South Korea—endure Daxia's fury?

"Second, as I just said, we don't even know the target's location or appearance. How could we carry out the plan?

"We've only heard from a few unofficial sources that he's a man in his twenties, handsome, and rarely leaves home.

"Are we supposed to go on a killing spree outside their company and murder everyone who looks handsome?

"Samsung couldn't bear the cost of that."

"At this critical moment, killing Ning Yifan, the boss of Shenma Technology Company, wouldn't be an assassination. It would be telling everyone outright, 'I did it.' Our products can't compete, and Samsung has no advantage over the five major home appliance companies in business.

"Assassination would be a foolish choice, and might even plunge Samsung into irreversible ruin."

"Then what about lowering our prices and starting a price war?"

"According to information from our corporate spies, the Phantom Projectors made by the major home appliance companies cost around 3,000 yuan each—several hundred less than Samsung's. We wouldn't win a price war either."

The meeting at Samsung lasted a full two days.

In the end, the company decided to abandon the market for television projectors and displays entirely.

It would cut off one of its own arms to survive. If it kept fighting the major home appliance companies of Daxia, Samsung was bound to lose and might even be dragged under.

For now, it had only lost one arm. It could keep going for a while...

Another major reason Samsung had made this decision was that Shenma Technology Company's research and development capabilities terrified Samsung's engineers.

Even if Samsung kept working on the materials it had obtained by reverse-engineering Phantom Projector technology and developed a new product, it feared Shenma Technology Company would suddenly unveil something even more powerful, just like this time, making all its efforts worthless and wasting enormous amounts of manpower and resources.