On the afternoon of August 16, Century Peak announced that it had officially acquired the webos business unit from HP. After the acquisition is completed, Century Peak will obtain the source code of webos, related files, engineering team, various affiliated websites, and HP's intellectual property licenses, including patents covering basic operating systems and user interface technologies. At the same time, after the acquisition is completed, all HP's platforms can still use webos and subsequent systems.

Century Peak Ceo Wu said: "Smartphones are part of our mobile strategy, but the webos operating system is more important. We hope to integrate all Century Peak's businesses together through webos. After completing the acquisition of webos, Motorola Mobile will launch a new mobile phone with webos system. Motorola mobile phones equipped with webos platform will be fully launched in the second half of next year."

A few weeks ago, when HP announced that it would give up the webos platform, this news bombed the entire electronics industry like a bombshell. In April last year, HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion, less than a year and a half. No one expected HP to give up so quickly. The webos system is quite excellent and has its own uniqueness. Many media believe that there will definitely be companies willing to take over Palm. For a time, all kinds of rumors and rumors emerge one after another.

According to media reports, Amazon, Samsung, and Oracle are all potential acquirers of Palm. Wang Xuehong, chairman of HTC, also said in an interview with the media that the company is currently measuring the acquisition of HP webos system or other mobile operating systems, but is not in a hurry to achieve success.

The reality is not the case. In fact, not many companies are interested in Palm. HP communicated with some companies with potential acquisition intentions, including Amazon, Samsung, and Intel. During the communication process, HP hoped to package and sell Webos and Palm for $1.2 billion, but no company was willing to take over. In the end, HP reduced the price to $500 million, but no company still took over.

All this was carried out in secret. Century Peak didn't know about it, so he quoted a tentative price of US$600 million. HP sold Palm for 500 million but didn't sell it. Now someone suddenly offered 600 million. Naturally, he was overjoyed, pretended to think about it, and then agreed. Century Peak acquisition team was very happy. Last year, HP spent $1.2 billion to acquire Palm. I thought this acquisition would cost US$1 billion, but I didn't expect it to be taken down. Century Peak generously stated that HP's products can still use the webos system in the future, but this acquisition must be carried out twice. Century Peak first acquired the webos system for US$200 million; after the entire acquisition is completed, Palm will be acquired for US$400 million.

Century Peak actually hopes to acquire wewos and Palm in packages, but there is no way to split the acquisition. Palm has 1,400 patents and patent applications involving mobile communication technology, including 1,000 US market patents and 400 overseas patents. When it comes to the acquisition of communication technology patents, it must be subject to review by the US government. In this way, it will take at least three or four months to complete the acquisition, and Century Peak is unwilling to wait.

Direct acquisition of the webos system does not involve communication technology patents, and Android and iOS in the US market have an absolute advantage. The market share of webos is less than 1%, which will not cause monopoly and will not have any adverse effects on the entire market. Naturally, there is no need to be reviewed. In this way, Century Peak can complete the acquisition of webos in the shortest time, and Motorola can start the development of webos platform mobile phones as soon as possible; and push the mobile phones to the market in the shortest time to seize market share. As for palm mobile phones and palm patents, it doesn’t matter if they are a little slower.

The media and the industry were not optimistic about Century Peak’s acquisition of Motorola. Now, when Century Peak has acquired webos again and is preparing to build a system by itself, I am even less optimistic about it, and it is a sensation of bad news.

Sharp comments: "The competition for mobile phone platforms has long reached a white-hot level. Apple's iOS and Google's Android are far ahead, and Microsoft's WP and BlackBerry's RM are closely behind. These companies' technology and strength are above the peak of the Century. If Century wants to make a breakthrough in mobile phone systems, they can only rely on miracles. Therefore, Century's acquisition of Motorola and Webos will eventually end in failure."

The media and the industry have not yet emerged from the news of Century Peak's acquisition of webos. Century Peak has thrown another even more amazing news, and this news caused a bomb to throw into the calm sea, causing a shocking wave.

On the morning of August 19, the official website of Century Peak announced that it had reached an agreement with Fly, and Fly invested US$100 million to obtain 30% ownership of the webos system. Next, Century Peak will form a development team with the elites drawn by Fly to participate in the development and optimization of the webos system.

Bai Yunfei, president of fly, said in a high profile in an interview: "Apple ios is a closed platform, and Google Android has become incredibly fragmented. The future of webos will be better than Google Android and Apple iOS. Although the market share of Android and Apple iOS is already very high, the entire industry can still accommodate another system, and we will support this system. I am excited about this, you can rate us in a year!"

On this day, Century Peak also announced: "Century Peak and Fly will disclose the webos source code to all programmers and promote webos to the open source community. After webos open source, any developer can customize their own webos system. The purpose of open source is to accelerate the development of webos platform. Century Peak and Fly will participate in the webos community after open source, become active participants and investors of the open source project, and manage the project to a certain extent."

Although Century Peak is known as an Internet+ movie company, most people think that Medieval Peak is not a company with strong technological attributes, but an entertainment company. Therefore, most media are not optimistic about Century Peak's acquisition of Motorola, and they are even less optimistic about Century Peak's development of webos. But now it is different if Fly joins. Fly has a large number of excellent engineers and programmers, tens of thousands of application developers, and more than 700 million users. After Fly joins, Century Peak can really build a complete ecosystem for webos.

After Fly acquired 30% of the shares of wewos, the media's attitude towards the peak of the century also took a 180-degree turn, and they began to look forward to the future of wewos.

"Fly joins the ranks of webos developers, and with the system open source, webos has the possibility of growing rapidly like Android and seizing the market quickly. After all, open source has great appeal to manufacturers and may allow popular mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC and LG to shift their targets."

"webos is an excellent system with many highlights, but the entire system lacks a system architecture as powerful as Android or iOS. After Fly joins, the biggest shortcomings of webos will be corrected. After all, Fly has the best architecture team in the world!"

The webos system has its own unique style and has accumulated some loyal enthusiasts over the years. This group of people followed Palmos to webos, and the fanaticism of fans is no less than that of iPhone fans. After hearing that Century Peak will work with Fly to develop the webos system, fans felt that it was like rain from the sky. They believed that webos really had a chance to rise this time.

In the world's largest webos community, wewos fans, including developers, engineers, and designers, have begun to join forces and prepare to immediately start the development of webos applications after webos is officially open source.

In various fly communities, fly developers have also begun to prepare for entering webos.webos is based on Linux, and the development method is similar to Android platform development. It is not difficult for them to develop applications for webos.

Google ceo Larry Perry was extremely angry after seeing the news that wewos was about to open source. He was not worried that wewos would pose a threat to Android. It was just that wewos was obviously coming for Android. He felt that he was fooled by Zhang Ran and couldn't swallow this. He immediately called Zhang Ran's phone and asked: "Zhang Ran, what do you mean?"

When Larry Perry called, Zhang Ran and Zhang Jingchu were preparing to go out for the trial. In Hollywood, trial is a necessary process before the movie is released. More than 80% of movies in Hollywood will be previewed, and Hollywood blockbusters will be previewed 100%.

The preview is usually an internal screening before the final editing version is completed, investigating and analyzing the audience's reaction to the film before the final editing version is released. The preview has two main purposes: one is to use the audience's reaction to evaluate the viewability of the film, and may adjust the content of the film based on the audience's opinions, such as re-cutting the end that is more in line with the audience's expectations or deleting the plot that the audience hates. The other is to evaluate the marketability of the film, analyze which elements in the film are the most attractive to the target audience, and provide reference for subsequent marketing.

Organizing the preview is not the film company itself. It often hires professional user research companies such as Nelson and NRG to conduct it. After accepting the trial task, these companies will recruit a certain number of viewers to participate in the preview based on the target audience group determined for the film previously, according to the standards of gender, age, viewing habits and lifestyle. After the audience recruitment is completed, they will be invited to watch the movie at a specific location. The production and distribution company will often send people to participate in the preview to observe the audience's reaction. After the movie is over, the organizer will ask the audience participating in the preview to fill out the questionnaire.

Zhang Ran knew that Larry Perry was here to seek punishment, and laughed and said, "What's wrong, Larry?"

Larry Perry shouted: "Don't pretend to be confused with me! Didn't you say that Century Peak is preparing to develop the system by yourself? Why buy the webos system? Why do you still need to open source? Are you going to start a war with Google?"

Zhang Ran said nonsense: "Google is our friend, how could we start a war with Google! We have many problems with the system we develop ourselves and have no competitiveness in the market, so it is better to buy a more mature system!"

Larry Perry was not willing to believe it, and scolded: "You liar!"

Zhang Ran chuckled: "Larry, you made a mistake. I'm not a liar, I'm just an actor!"

"Fuck!" Larry Perry almost vomited blood without any anger and threw down his phone.

Zhang Ran heard a loud thud from the movie, and then a busy voice rubbed his ears and said, "This is so exciting, I actually threw my phone down!"

When Zhang Jingchu saw Zhang Ran with a smug smile, she knew that he had some bad idea and asked with a smile: "Who said you are a liar?"

Zhang Ran raised his eyebrows and said relaxedly: "Google's Larry Perry!"

Zhang Jingchu asked, "What did you lie to him? He actually made others so angry that he threw his phone down!"

Zhang Ran grinned and said, "I have won an opportunity to grab the market for mobile phone systems from these foreigners in the future."

Zhang Jingchu knew about Century Peak’s acquisition of Webos, but she had never cared about such business matters, and was not clear about what Zhang Ran and the others were doing to acquire the Webos system. Now when she heard Zhang Ran’s words, she immediately understood and waved her fist and said, “You will definitely succeed!”

Zhang Ran smiled at Zhang Jingchu and said, "We will work hard! Let's go, go to the cinema!" He took Zhang Jingchu's hand, walked out of the room, drove to the city center, and went to the preview cinema.
Chapter completed!