Steal the enemy's base at the start and build a technological empire.

Chapter 482 Cloud Body 1

The StarPhone 2 launch event was held at the Beijing International Convention Center, the same venue as the first generation. Staff arrived three days in advance to set up, and Wang Jianguo stayed up for two more nights, flashing the system image of the demo unit no less than twenty times.

Half an hour before the show started, the venue was already packed. People were standing in the aisles, and someone in the back row was holding up a StarPhone to take pictures of the large screen on stage. The screen was still dark, with only one line of text faintly glowing in the center—"Cloud-to-Cloud Integration."

The lights dimmed. The four characters on the large screen slowly disappeared, replaced by an animation: a drop of water fell from the top of the screen, landing on the surface, and ripples spread outwards in concentric circles. After the ripples subsided, the Spark logo appeared.

Ling Yun walked out from the left side of the stage. A spotlight shone on him; he was wearing a dark gray turtleneck sweater under a black suit, without a tie. He stood in the center of the stage, glanced at the audience, and the stadium of over three thousand people fell silent for a moment.

"A year and a half ago, we launched the StarPhone 1 here," he began, his voice carrying through the speakers and echoing softly throughout the venue. "That day I told you that mobile phones would change the world again."

He paused.

"In the past year and a half, StarPhone 1 has been sold in more than 100 countries and regions. Global sales—" A number popped up on the big screen, "—exceeded 1.5 million units."

Applause erupted from the audience, but Ling Yun gently suppressed it with his hand.

"But I'm not here today to report sales figures. What I'm launching today isn't a new phone with upgraded hardware." He took a step forward. "It's something entirely new. This thing will redefine—the way your device connects to the world."

The large screen lit up, displaying four words: Spark Cloud Service.

"Turn on your StarPhone." Ling Yun picked up the StarPhone 2 from the podium, turned on the screen, and said, "Take a picture."

He raised his phone, pointed it at the audience, and pressed the shutter. With a click, the photo froze on the screen, then automatically shrunk and flew into the cloud icon in the upper right corner.

"Filming complete." He put his phone back on the podium and picked up another device that had been prepared beforehand—a brand new StarPhone 2, still in its plastic wrap. In front of the entire audience, he tore off the wrap, turned it on, and logged into his StarPhone account. A few seconds later, a notification popped up on the screen: Cloud sync complete.

He opened the photo album. The photo he had just taken lay there quietly.

"You got a new phone." Ling Yun held up both phones, screens facing the audience. "No data cable needed, no computer needed, no operation required. Just log in to your Spark account—everything is there."

There was a moment of silence in the audience, and then applause surged from the back row to the front like a tide.

Ling Yun put down his phone and continued operating it. The large screen simultaneously switched to the StarPhone 2 interface. "Contacts, text messages, calendar, app list, desktop wallpaper—even your alarm clock times," he said, swiping the screen as he spoke. Each time he scrolled to an item, the corresponding icon lit up. "It's all automatically backed up to the cloud. When you switch phones, you only need to do one thing—log in."

"From today onwards, every photo, every document, every message on your phone will never be lost again." He paused, "Even if you drop your phone into water, into a river, into—" He thought for a moment, "into a hot pot."

The audience laughed.

Ling Yun smiled briefly, then his smile faded. "We call this feature Spark Cloud Service. It's powered by Nebula Technology's Rock Elastic Computing Platform and Haina Object Storage. You might not care much about the technical details, but there's one thing you should remember: it's supported by the cloud computing infrastructure we've built over three years with an investment of tens of billions. It's not a service we bought from someone else; we wrote it ourselves, line by line."

The applause started again, even louder than before.

After the demonstration, the large screen switched to a video feed. Steve Jobs was sitting in his office at Apple headquarters, with that familiar white wall behind him. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and looked a little thinner than when he last appeared in public, but his eyes were still the same.

"Ling, congratulations. Your StarPhone 2 is fantastic," Steve Jobs said to the camera. "But don't forget, next year I'll be back with my work to compete with you. Get ready."

The video freezes on the frame where Jobs' lips are slightly upturned.

Ling Yun looked at the big screen and waited for the applause to subside.

"I'm waiting." He turned to face the audience. "But Steve, the race between the stars and the sea is never about who wins or loses, but about who can make the world a better place. On this track, we are all competitors—" He paused, a slight smile playing on his lips, "and also teammates."

The final information popped up on the big screen: StarPhone 2, starting at 4999 yuan, will be available for sale globally on January 15th.

Ling Yun stood in the center of the stage, a spotlight enveloping him in a small halo. "Over the past year and a half, people have asked me how Spark has managed to establish itself in the high-end market. I said, it's because of two things—technology and trust. The technology was written line by line by ourselves. The trust was built by you selling us phone by phone." He placed the remote control on the podium. "Thank you."

After the event, Zhao Weiguo caught Ling Yun backstage, holding up his phone with real-time data from the official website displayed on the screen. "Guess how many pre-sales were on the first day?"

"How many?"

"Five hundred thousand units." Zhao Weiguo's voice trembled slightly. "Last year, the first day of sales for the first generation was one hundred thousand units. That's a fivefold increase."

Ling Yun took the phone and glanced at it. The pre-sale numbers were still jumping up, changing almost every second. He handed the phone back to Zhao Weiguo, grabbed his coat, and walked out.

"Brother Ling, where are you going?"

"Let's go home." Ling Yun pushed open the side door of the conference center, and the cold winter wind of Beijing rushed in, making the hem of her coat flutter. "My daughter said she wanted to see giraffes, and I haven't kept my promise to her yet."

Zhao Hu had already driven the car to the door. Ling Yun climbed into the back seat and leaned back. The lights of Chang'an Avenue outside the window receded one after another. He took out his phone, found the message Steve Jobs had sent, and typed three words in reply: "Waiting for you." Then he turned his phone over and placed it face down on his lap, looking at the city lights outside the car window.