Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 248 Market Domination

After the competitors left the market, it became empty.

Within a month, 402 achieved a global market share of over 50% in all seven core technology tracks.

Han Lu had the market analysis department create a complete data visualization. When she pieced together the seven market share charts, she discovered something that made her stop. The overlapping parts of the seven sectors formed a regular heptagon. Each corner extended towards a different track, and the center of gravity of the seven tracks was Hangzhou.

Quantum computing cloud services: 73% global market share. The remaining 27% is scattered among a dozen or so companies and research institutions, with no single entity holding more than 5%. IBM and Google together hold 17%, with the rest scattered across various sectors. The most crucial figure isn't 73%, but rather the growth rate. Tianyan Quantum Cloud's monthly new user growth is still increasing at a rate of one-eighth per month. 73% is not the end, but the journey towards 90%.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) medical devices: 68%. Neuralink holds 19%, and several smaller companies in Europe, Japan, and South Korea take the remaining 13%. This 68% to 19% split isn't a duopoly; it's a single company dominating. Moreover, this 68% share was achieved within three quarters of BCI being included in health insurance coverage. Once covered by health insurance, hospital procurement is no longer constrained by budgets, and the growth curve changes directly from linear to exponential.

Commercial space launches: SpaceX holds 41% of the global launch volume market share, but accounts for 52% of launch revenue. This is because SpaceX carries more than twice the payload of its competitors in a single launch. It can carry more cargo in the same number of launches, and the launch cost per ton of payload is less than half that of its competitors.

Satellite internet: Starlink holds 55% of the global active user market share, while Skylink holds 34%. The remaining 11% is distributed among several emerging competitors. 55% to 34%, a difference of 1.6 times. Considering Starlink's user growth has almost stagnated while Skylink's user base is growing at double-digit rates every month, this gap will only widen in the future. Most importantly, 60% of Skylink's new users come from developing countries, which are not Starlink's target markets.

Autonomous driving cloud-based dispatching: 61% market share globally. Tesla's self-developed system accounts for 26%. The remaining 13% is distributed among several automakers testing the waters. 61% means that for every two vehicles on the road worldwide equipped with cloud-based dispatching systems, more than one is running the 402 algorithm.

Space-based solar power: 100%. Currently, there is no second commercially viable space-based solar power company in the world. It's not that the 402 blockade has blocked the technology; it's that others can't catch up with the technological gap.

Smart city overall solutions: While holding a 44% market share in the number of globally signed cities, our contract value accounts for 57%. This is because our 402 solution encompasses the entire value chain, resulting in a single city contract value four times that of our competitors. Signing one city is equivalent to others signing four.

Han Lu stared at the regular heptagon for a long time, then said something to Zuo Cheng.

"Seven sectors all exceed 50%. This isn't just market share; it's the figure a market leader should have."

Zuo Cheng took the diagram and glanced at it. He traced the edge of the heptagon with his finger, marking each corner. Quantum computing, brain-computer interface, commercial spaceflight, satellite internet, autonomous driving, space photovoltaics, smart cities. Seven corners, not one isolated.

"When these seven areas are combined, the barriers are not simply additive."

He took out a pen and drew seven horizontal lines on the diagram, each line representing the intensity of competition in a particular track. The black lines were drawn on a white background, radiating from the center of the regular heptagon to each corner.

"It's to the seventh power."

His point is that any competitor wanting to challenge 402's dominance in one area must simultaneously withstand competitive pressure from six other areas. A single-point breakthrough is impossible because 402 can defend itself in each area using resources from the other six. To defeat 402, an attack must be launched simultaneously in seven areas. No company in the world has this capability.

At the afternoon market share summary meeting, Zuo Cheng didn't follow the usual practice of looking at the data before summarizing. He walked to the whiteboard, picked up a pen, and wrote a question: What is a moat?

No one spoke in the meeting room. Han Lu was there, Yu Ying was there, Shen Yiming was there, Chen Hao, Liu Wei, and Fang Ze were all there. Everyone knew the answer, but no one wanted to be the first to say it.

Zuo Cheng answered the question himself.

"Market share isn't a moat. Market share is a line drawn for you by others; you might be number one today, but not tomorrow." He turned and wrote the next line on the whiteboard. "A real moat is when you're always moving forward, and others can't even see which way you're going."

The last line on the whiteboard reads: "The next goal is not to hold on, but to widen the gap by another order of magnitude."

After the meeting, Yu Ying called Zuo Cheng to her office alone.

She developed a new model. Using historical data on civilization perception, she reverse-engineered the growth pattern from the seventh to the eighth branch, and then predicted the ninth branch. The model provided a timeframe of eight months.

However, she added a note at the bottom of the model: If an acceleration factor exists, the time can be compressed to within three months.

Zuo Cheng looked at the note and opened the system panel. The progress bar for the ninth branch was at 40%. It had grown from 19% to 40% in less than nine months. Faster than he had expected.

He glanced at the three-branch fusion algorithm interface again. A new message appeared on the system panel: The more iterations the algorithm undergoes, the faster the progress bar increases.

"Let it do more work," Zuo Cheng muttered to himself. "The more it's used, the faster it grows."

Yu Ying didn't hear what he was saying. She was too focused on the data on the screen. She was staring at another set of data. There was a 0.3-degree discrepancy between the location coordinates of the Sahara anomaly and the location of the light spot on the civilization perception interface. 0.3 degrees is negligible on a star system scale, but on a planetary surface scale, it means an error of at least tens of kilometers.

"Make her do more work." Yu Ying repeated Zuo Cheng's words, not fully understanding them, but she knew what Zuo Cheng was thinking. Every time Zuo Cheng talked to himself, he was communicating with the system.

"The precision isn't enough," she said, changing the subject. "To get the accurate coordinates, we need to go to the site."

Zuo Cheng closed the control panel. "I know. It'll be soon."

He spoke those two words without the slightest hesitation.