Chapter 546: Phantom Online!
Translator: _Min_ Editor: Caron_
The news of Xin successfully launching a meteorological satellite caused a small earthquake in global news before quickly settling down. The national “Olympic project” of aerospace was no longer as novel as before – people were just shocked that this small island country in the Pacific once again made headlines before everyone tucked the news away in the back of their heads.
For some reason, the observers from the United Nations chose to conceal the two-stage rocket launching technology Celestial Trade used, and Celestial Trade didn’t publicly disclose it to the media either, so the technology wasn’t made aware to the general public.
But Jiang Chen was certain that NASA, also based in Nouveau York along with the United Nations, must know this information and was concerned about how to handle the hearing from the UA Congress. They received a large amount of funding each year, yet a small country in the Pacific managed to surpass them in technological advancements…
Compared to the peaceful Xin, neighboring country F was in the midst of troubled times.
The guerrillas of Moro successfully occupied the city of Dawo weeks ago and established it as the capital of Moro. Country F obviously wouldn’t just give in. Aquino first denounced Santos as a terrorist and criminal then sent two additional infantry divisions and a UA-trained modern mechanical brigade to launch a large-scale operation on MLL Island.
At the same time, the UA had completed its governmental transition and assisted F in denouncing Moro’s independence movement. They also sent out fighter jets to attack the command center of the guerrillas.
The battle once again entered a stalemate.
On the other hand, the vice president of Xin and minister of economics visited New Guinea and brought along the representative from Future Mining as well as businessmen from Ange Island in charge of projects exceeding one billion USD.
Yang Yuan seemed to have gotten over Su Fei; he put all his energy into his work in an attempt to forget about her. On the visit to New Guinea, he went as the general manager of Future Mining and managed to secure five steel plants and two aluminum processing plants to move high-pollution production from Ange Island to the undeveloped neighboring countries.
BHP’s ores were subsequently transported to New Guinea for crude treatment before they were transported to Xin for further processing with special equipment to create a unique steel-aluminum alloy. The alloy was extremely light, but the strength and hardness were no inferior to a titanium alloy. Jiang Chen didn’t explain the purpose of the alloy to Yang Yuan; he just vaguely explained that these alloys would be used to complete a special project.
While the Vice President was visiting New Guinea, Zhang Yapin signed eleven policies to simplify the tourism visa application process, lowering tourism taxes with the intent of stimulating the tourism industry. Following the introduction of these policies, Xin established the foundation for a prosperous tourism policy. 2017 was destined to be the year that marked the start of Xin’s tourism boom.
Wei Yun, who already received the news from Jiang Chen, had fully prepared for this day. He featured the Heart of the Sea, underwater hotel, hot spring beach, sea maze and other tourism activities on advertisements on two forms of media – web and TV. The ads even made it to billboards at Times Square.
Coro Island’s airport opened its newly built runaway to meet the demand of 1700 departing and arriving flights per day. The airport also increased direct flights to major metropolises around the world including Shangjin, Wanghai, Xiangjiang, and Los Santos to save the trouble of having to connect through Autria.
On the first day of increased direct flights, the number of people entering the border with a tourist visa increased from 1347 to 2397 people and continued to rise at a daunting speed. Based on estimations from Xin’s tourism ministry, visitors from the first quarter of 2017 could break 100 thousand and reach 500 thousand by the second quarter.
Based on the influence of this disclosed data, the three international rating agencies all increased Xin’s investment rating which facilitated a large sum of international money flowing into Xin.
President Zhang Yapin couldn’t stop his mouth from smiling when he heard the news. Xin’s GDP increased by 100% in 2016 and managed to completely transition from a fishing and plantation-based economy to a country focused on manufacturing and tourism.
Future Group’s subsidiaries all had stellar performance but compared to Future Technology, all of them added together still paled in comparison.
The first 30 million Phantom helmets that entered the market were sold out on the first day and were promptly sold for three times the original price on the black market. Future Technology had to make an announcement to limit each Future account to purchase a maximum of two Phantom helmets which somewhat alleviated the situation.
Even then, all subsequent Phantoms released into the global market were sold out on the first day. A lot of netizens unaware of the story started to criticize Future Technology of being too egotistical and using the “starved market technique” to bully consumers that continuously supported them.
But Future Technology had their own difficulties since millions of helmets distributed across the world meant only a few million units per country. In order to meet market demands, it required time.
Regardless of how much those people cursed, they would immediately order the new batch of helmets once they were made available. Indeed, Future Technology’s product didn’t fall short of their expectations.
Once all 80 million helmets were sold, once the costs of transportation, production, tax, and other miscellaneous costs were accounted for, the average profit per helmet was 791.1 USD and the total profit came to a ridiculous 64.07 billion USD! The daunting profitability scared all of Wall Street.
In the field of virtual reality, Future Technology, with the absolute technological advantage, didn’t have any competition. Regardless of how the patent offices in each country pushed for patent rights, Future Technology didn’t budge at all.
With an absolute technological advantage, Future Technology didn’t need to make the technology publically available in exchange for protection.
The moment the 64.07 billion in profits was settled, the first thing Jiang Chen did was pay back his loan with interest to the Rothschild bank.
When they recuperated their loan, the head of the Rothschild bank attentively expressed to Jiang Chen to please contact them if Future Group ever encountered any problems with cash flow in the future. Jiang Chen only smiled at the offer without responding.
Since Future Technology’s profitability was more than enough to meet the expansion demands of Future Group, he didn’t need to take out loans anymore.
Following the official sales of the Phantom helmet, Future Technology and Godly Land’s official site published the official release date of the first immersive virtual reality MMORPG, closed the colosseum mode, and opened character registration.
The initial virtual reality helmet only had a grey cubical room with a simple web-viewing function. Even then, some people were happy to wear the helmet for an entire night. A lot of tech companies constantly jammed Future Technology’s phone line with the hopes of resolving the compatibility problems between their software and the helmet. This included Penguin that desperately wanted to expand their social media platform.
Future Technology gave a standard response. Because of technical limitations, the Phantom helmet’s system could only support Godly Land as well as their internal web browser. With improvements in software, the compatibility problem would gradually be solved.
Before the start of official cooperation, Future Technology still needed to consider which areas could be worked on cooperatively and which areas must be controlled.
Just as the world was in frenzy over immersive virtual reality technology, Jiang Chen accompanied the delegation of Xin to board the flight to Shangjin, thus beginning his visit to Hua.