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

Chapter 463 App Store Ecosystem Explosion

Three days after the press conference, Wang Jianguo rushed into Lingyun's office carrying a laptop.

"Mr. Ling, look at this."

He placed the computer on the table; the screen displayed the backend data for the Spark App Store. Ling Yun was eating a boxed lunch, his chopsticks dangling in mid-air.

"The number of apps has increased from 103 to 216," Wang Jianguo said, tapping the screen with his finger. "It doubled in three days."

Lingyun put down his chopsticks and turned the computer to face him. The numbers in the background were still jumping—not just a delayed real-time refresh, but real. With each refresh, the number of registered developers increased by a few.

"Is the review team able to keep up?"

"We can't keep up. I borrowed six people from the legal department yesterday to help with the reviews." Wang Jianguo wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Some developers submitted apps that were too rough, but some—" He grabbed the computer and opened an app details page. "Look at this one, a college student wrote a Snake game in his dorm. It's been online for three days and has been downloaded 80,000 times."

Lingyun scrolled down the comments. The first one read: "This game is addictive; I played it for the entire calculus class." The second one said: "It's much more fun than Nokia's Snake game." The third one simply said: "Addictive."

"What's the developer's name?"

"I don't know his real name; his developer ID is 'Dormitory Programmer'," Wang Jianguo chuckled. "I called him yesterday, and he thought I was a scammer and hung up. I had to call three times before he believed me."

Ling Yun pushed the laptop back. "Did you put it on speakerphone when you let him answer the phone?"

"It's open. It's incredibly noisy over there, like it's in the cafeteria. I told him his Snake game had surpassed 80,000 downloads, and he dropped his chopsticks."

"And your income?"

"Based on an 80/20 split, he should get around 30,000 yuan this week." Wang Jianguo paused for a moment. "He told me on the phone that his parents always thought studying computer science was a dead-end career and wanted him to go back and take the civil service exam. He said he'd send a screenshot to his mom once the money arrived in his account."

Ling Yun stood up and walked to the window. Down in the park, people were moving newly arrived server racks; forklifts were slowly backing up wooden crates. He turned around. "Give me that college student's phone number."

"Are you going to call him?"

"I'll call him."

When the call connected, it was indeed very noisy on the other end. There was the sound of spatulas hitting the wok, and someone shouting, "Auntie, give me more meat!"

"Feed? Who?"

"I am Ling Yun."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone. Then came the sound of a chair being knocked over.

"President Ling Ling Ling?"

"I'm done with your Snake game," Lingyun said. "The snake's head direction detection could be improved. Your current algorithm misjudges the direction when you tap rapidly."

"I...I know, the logic was written too simply, I'm going to revise it—"

"After making the changes, I submitted the update. Someone mentioned this bug in the user feedback; fixing it actually increased download numbers."

"Mr. Ling, how could you—"

"Because I've written code before," Lingyun said. "Keep going. If you have any technical questions, post them on the Spark Developer Community, and someone will reply to you."

After hanging up the phone, Wang Jianguo stood to the side with a strange expression.

"What's wrong?"

"While you were on the phone, I received a new message in the backend." Wang Jianguo turned his computer screen around. "A programmer from a third-tier city created a bus route query app, and it got over 20,000 downloads in just two days. In the app description, he wrote: 'Thanks to Xinghuo, even a graduate from a second-tier university like me can support myself by writing code.'"

Ling Yun stared at the screen. There were already hundreds of comments below that sentence. The first was: "Keep it up, bro! I'm also from a second-tier university." The second was: "Your app is pretty useful. Does it have all the bus routes for Jinan?" The third was: "Yes, I entered them one by one."

That afternoon, Ling Yun asked Chen Zhongming to arrange an impromptu internal meeting.

There were more than a dozen people in the conference room. Zhao Weiguo flew back from Guangzhou, Ma Baoguo rushed over from Shenzhen, and Wang Jianguo sat in the corner holding his laptop.

Ling Yun did not sit down. He stood in front of the whiteboard and wrote four numbers with a marker: 800, 3000 million, 1.5 million, and 1500 million.

"The number of apps has exceeded 800, and the cumulative downloads have exceeded 30 million." He pointed to the first and second figures, "These are our current achievements. There are 1,500 participating developers, and the first phase of the innovation fund is 150 million." He pointed to the third and fourth figures, "These are the scale and budget for next year's Spark Developer Conference."

No one spoke in the meeting room.

"Next year, the revenue share for developers will be increased from 82% to 85%." Ling Yun put down his marker. "Developers will get 85%, and Xinghuo will get 15%."

Zhao Weiguo frowned. "Brother Ling, with such a high price, how are we going to cover the operating costs of our app store?"

"We're not considering profitability for the first three years," Ling Yun said. "The most important thing now isn't how much money we make, but building up the ecosystem. The more applications we have, the more users will rely on Xinghuo OS; the more users we have, the more developers will be willing to write applications on Xinghuo OS. This flywheel is only just beginning to turn."

Wang Jianguo looked up from the corner. "President Ling, there's one more thing."

"explain."

"This morning, a post went viral on the forum." Wang Jianguo connected his computer to the projector, and a forum page popped up on the big screen. The title was "I earned enough for a down payment on a house using the Spark SDK in three months."

The post was quite long. The author recounted how he went from a real estate agent with absolutely no programming knowledge to learning to code through tutorials on the Spark Open Source Community, and then developing and releasing an accounting app. Last month, with his commission income arriving, he made a down payment on a small two-bedroom apartment in his hometown. The post ended with: "My mom asked me where the money came from, and I said I earned it from coding. She didn't believe me, so I showed her my bank statements, and she cried."

The meeting room was silent for a few seconds.

Ma Baoguo coughed, picked up his teacup, and took a sip.

Ling Yun turned off the projector. "This is what we need to do."

After the meeting, Wang Jianguo caught up with him and said, "President Ling, that college student who plays Snake just submitted a new app. It's a vocabulary learning app, and I asked the review team to look at it first."

"How is it?"

"Not bad. The interface is a bit rough, but the functions are very practical. He also built a study check-in group into the app, using Xingyu's native sharing interface." Wang Jianguo took out his phone and handed it over, "Take a look for yourself."

Ling Yun took the phone, flipped through it, and handed it back to Wang Jianguo. "Tell him that if the app can be optimized by the end of the month, I'll have the marketing department put it on the featured list."

"Are you serious?"

"When have I ever not been serious?"

Wang Jianguo shook his head with a smile, "President Ling, do you think if we keep going like this, can we stop at 2,000 people for next year's developer conference?"

Ling Yun smiled slightly, "Next year we'll be doing a live online broadcast."