Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 700-series chip landed with a message—the era of dribbling out tiny upgrades is over. Built on a 10-nanometer process rather than the mainstream 14-nanometer node, the silicon brings a clear leap: benchmark scores cresting 150,000, GPU bursts that don't stutter, and power efficiency that lets thin phones stay cool under load. Paired with it, Green Factory's R7 Pro looks and behaves like a flagship that wandered into the mid-range by mistake.
But what held Heifeng's attention wasn't the R7 Pro's sheen but the process technology underneath. Harmony's X-series—Huaxing's big second-half bet—had already been scoped to use 10-nanometer. Qualcomm showing its hand this early meant the American supplier still had cards face down. If the mid-tier had already hit these numbers, the unannounced flagship part would almost certainly have reached 10-nanometer, pushing stable benchmarks past two hundred thousand. "They've been forced into it," Heifeng thought. "No more toothpaste squeezing—no more microscopic, once-a-year nudges. Real jumps from here."
He set those projections aside as Green Factory's launch rolled on. The R7 family split neatly: the standard model with 3+32 GB and 3+64 GB at ¥2,299 (≈$320) and ¥2,699 (≈$375); the Pro at ¥2,999 (≈$420) and ¥3,599 (≈$500). Forty-five-watt flash charging gave the base R7 a bite above its weight class, and the hardware design was genuinely pretty. The Pro's price—seven to eight hundred yuan more for the upgrades—left its value-for-money argument a bit thin. Still, consumers vote with their wallets, and that night they voted loudly: first-day sales for the R7 series vaulted past a million units. Green Factory finally had a credible seat at the flagship table.
Six weeks later, the scene shifted from handsets to highways. Audi Auto's groundwork was done. Across China, its 4S stores stood up whole demo fleets; the initial batch of a thousand A6s had already been dispatched to provincial leadership for extended evaluation. The feedback returned swift and warm: comfortable ride quality, generous rear legroom, disciplined chassis noise. Both passengers and assigned drivers praised it without prompting. Heifeng had never planned to keep this quiet—if your car becomes the official vehicle, you don't whisper; you buy a megaphone. The PR team pushed the story through every channel that mattered. Brand elevation opportunities don't knock twice.
With momentum at its back, Audi Auto announced a product launch for seven days hence. Weibo lit up within minutes. "Wait, the A6 became an official car just like that?" one comment read. "That status alone bumps the brand a tier," another chimed. "Who dares say Audi Auto isn't good now? The officials have already cast their vote." And then the clincher, half joke and half conviction: "Decision made. I'm buying what the leaders ride."
Foot traffic surged at 4S stores nationwide. Shoppers who'd hesitated over Audi Auto's unfamiliar badge came to see for themselves, and most walked away disarmed by the driving feel and cabin execution. The question in their eyes wasn't "Is a domestic car good enough?" anymore; it was "If it's good enough for the state fleet, what exactly am I worried about?"
Meanwhile, in a villa owned by Yasefu in the German expat community, several country heads for European marques in China gathered with tight jaws and shorter tempers. Steve Zien, who ran Benma Group's China business, spoke first, voice flat: "Gentlemen, Audi Auto's move was…unexpected." The China lead for Otto thumped the arm of his chair. "Damn Audi Auto. Damn, Heifeng Lu. We courted that government order for months—offered the B525 at ¥400,000 (≈$55,500), practically bleeding margin—and still lost it."
Heads swiveled. "Four hundred thousand for a C-class luxury sedan and you still lost?" someone blurted. At that price, even their procurement teams would have expected a handshake. Yet the contract had slipped away to a domestic upstart. Zien exhaled through his nose. "Then it isn't about price," he said. "Their boss must have an extraordinary background."
The nods around the room were automatic, the logic unexamined. None seriously considered that Audi Auto might have out-positioned them on total value—on the right mix of comfort, tech, running costs, and national-fleet logistics. In their calculus, an official procurement order is where profit finally begins after years of brand theater. You don't leave money on the table there. So, to explain a loss that shouldn't be possible, they reached for the old, convenient answer: connections.
At Huaxing, Heifeng focused less on rivals' rationalizations and more on cadence. The playbook was already set on phones: Harmony X-series on 10-nanometer in the second half, with a public promise that Huaxing would avoid the "squeeze" strategy the industry had come to hate. He didn't want customers to feel like they were buying last year plus one. Each generation had to feel like a gear shift, not a coat of paint. Qualcomm's pivot only reinforced that judgment. If the silicon ecosystem moved in real steps, everything layered on top—modems, cameras, ML—could move in steps too.
On cars, the timetable was even more delicate. The seven-day countdown wasn't just a press conference but a referendum on whether Audi Auto could capitalize on the official-car halo without alienating ordinary buyers. Pricing had to be surgical—signal strength, not maximum volume. Yeifeng told his team, You can harvest reputation, but don't overharvest. The point of the officials' trial wasn't to corner a single fat order—it was to show the public the car could meet the most demanding criteria in the country, then invite them to judge for themselves.
As for the murmurs from the German table? Those were background noise. Let them talk about backgrounds. The more they underestimated pricing discipline and manufacturing competence, the less prepared they'd be when the next move landed. What mattered was execution: keeping the A6 experience consistent in every store, tightening after-sales response times, and ensuring supply chains absorb the demand spike after launch day without cracking. "No toothpaste," Heifeng reminded everyone again in the final prep meeting. "Not in chips, not in phones, not in cars. If we move, it has to be felt."
Three markets, one principle. In chips, a node shrinks, changing the shape of a phone. In phones, a portfolio that made harmony—hardware, software, services—feel like a real ecosystem, not a marketing word. In autos, a value stack that forced even skeptical shoppers to admit the domestic badge had earned its place on the road. As the week wound down and media RSVPs poured in, Heifeng's phone buzzed with another update from retail: showroom test-drive bookings had doubled again, and social sentiment was tipping from curiosity to expectation. That was the point of the megaphone. You don't whisper when you have something to say—especially when the product can tell the rest once people get behind the wheel.