He somewhat jokingly took the name "Smartisan" (Hammer). Previously, his "feat" of smashing a Siemens refrigerator with a hammer made him famous overnight. He wanted to create a similar sensation in the mobile phone industry. This seemed to foreshadow his fate in the following years: excitement.

Another foreshadowing happened that summer. When the Smartisan office moved from Zhongguancun to Wangjing, a sudden thunderstorm with heavy rain erupted during loading. Luo Yonghao stood by the window of the old office, muttering "Okay, okay, I know." Soon, the thunder stopped and the rain subsided, as if the weather had reached a reconciliation with him.

"Reconciliation" was another theme of Luo Yonghao's six years at Smartisan. To some extent, this was the secret to his survival from the "mobile phone valley of death," but everything comes at a cost. One of the sacrifices Luo Yonghao made was the former "Luo Yonghao Keduo."

Part One

Smartisan's April 9 launch event at Beijing University of Technology did not create a viral sensation.

Some fans were surprised, but those inside the venue saw it as normal. Aside from value for money, the Nut Pro 3 launched that day was unremarkable. Even Luo Yonghao's usually brilliant speech was like withered magnolia flowers in this season, listless and unenergetic. After the event, fans in WeChat groups discussed who had fallen asleep longer.

Luo Yonghao chose to "confront." After the launch, he posted on Weibo: "I checked the online feedback. Many people using Xiang (derogatory term) said it's ugly. Well, it will definitely sell well. Sleep well." The next day, he claimed on his WeChat official account that those calling Nut Pro 3 ugly were idiots.

Still the same tone of innate pride, but the formula seemed different from six years ago.

At that time, his target was Xiaomi. 2012 was a year of rapid progress and acclaim for the Xiaomi model. By the end of November, Xiaomi's sales had exceeded 10 billion yuan—it took Huawei and Coolpad six years to achieve this figure, while it was only two years since Lei Jun drank that bowl of Xiaomi soup.

But Luo Yonghao was not convinced.

He quickly demonstrated his sharp tongue, mocking Xiaomi as "mobile phone futures" and "monkey-style marketing." He was even proud of his sharpness: "Lei Jun has indeed been forced by us to pay attention to design and pretend to have humanistic feelings."

But what goes around comes around. "Production capacity" became Luo Yonghao's Achilles' heel in the following years. After feeling the pain, he conveyed his apologies to Lei Jun and lamented that making products is not easy.

But those are later stories. Back in 2012, there was no doubt that Luo Yonghao caught the wave of smartphones.

In the heat of the trend, many major changes were already beginning to emerge.

Xiaomi was naturally the hottest star, and Smartisan directly replicated its early model: first make ROM, then make phones. More major manufacturers hadn't reacted yet—Huawei wouldn't launch its internet brand "Honor" until 2013, Meizu wouldn't have "Meilan" until 2014, and Lenovo's ZUK was a latecomer in 2015.

More stories of disruption unfolded among phone manufacturers other than Apple:

Nokia's 14-year reign as the world's leading phone maker was replaced by Samsung. "Iron Lady" Cher Wang led HTC to complete its premium strategic transformation, taking the second position. BlackBerry manufacturer RIM chose a dangerous path: BlackBerry 10 became its all-or-nothing product, but it dragged from 2012 to 2013. While reluctantly releasing a touchscreen version, it stubbornly retained the physical keyboard.

At the time, RIM was still optimistic. Then-CEO Thorsten Heins, speaking about Nokia's decline, said: "We now have about 80 million users—something Nokia doesn't have." But the reality was that despite BlackBerry phones having fans like Obama and Lady Gaga, when BlackBerry shut down BB OS service on April Fool's Day this year, ultimately, BlackBerry, like Nokia, left its glory to history.

In the midst of turmoil, the waves stirred by Luo Yonghao seemed to carry a somewhat playful element. Many people were already watching with amusement, preparing to see how this cross-talk actor and English teacher would mess up.偏偏 Luo Yonghao provided the material:

The ROM originally scheduled for late 2012 was delayed until March of the following year. Due to a severe shortage of engineers, many functions couldn't be implemented. Combined with the launch event dragging on and network paralysis, it became a "terrible" debut, with almost universal criticism online.

Some media reported that Luo Yonghao suffered insomnia that night. The next day, he maintained silence on Weibo.

Part Two

In the early years of Smartisan, Luo Yonghao couldn't shake the "unreliable" label.

He was arrogant. In 2013, when there wasn't even a shadow of a phone, he posted on Weibo: "Why does it seem that only Smartisan Technology is most likely to become the next Sony (Sony in the Konica era) or the next Apple (Apple in the Jobs era)?" That year, the most active player in the domestic phone market was the 799 yuan Red Rice phone, which directly boosted Xiaomi's sales. During that year's "Double 11," Xiaomi sold 100 million yuan in three minutes.

He was casual, even in front of investors. "He would even chat, look at his phone, and ignore investors," media person Huang Zhangjin once commented. Luo Yonghao, eloquent on the speech stage, actually had some social anxiety and didn't know how to say half-truths when negotiating cooperation.

Not long after that "terrible" ROM launch in 2013, Luo Yonghao burned through the 9 million yuan from Momo's Tang Yan. It was his first time facing financial difficulties. But many investors were wary of this madman who had once smashed a refrigerator. A venture capitalist from a famous fund once said, "I really admire Old Luo," but he turned around and told his colleagues: "We won't give him a single cent."

Smartisan's troubles on the production line gave Luo Yonghao a "hammer blow."

In May 2014, Smartisan T1 was launched. For Luo Yonghao, who had never been involved in hardware production, this was undoubtedly a historic step. In product promotional images, he proudly called it "the best smartphone in the Eastern Hemisphere." Perhaps fearing the new Advertising Law regulations, the slogan soon changed to "the second-best smartphone in the world."

At that launch, Luo Yonghao held his head high and proudly mocked the entire phone industry, even though the T1 initially only came in a 3G version.

The supply chain gave him a slap in the face. Due to low yield rates—some media cited industry insiders saying Smartisan phone yield rates wouldn't exceed 50%, while normal values should be above 93%—T1 couldn't be supplied normally for several months after launch, forcing Luo Yonghao to rush to Foxconn to personally oversee production.

The momentum built at the launch cooled as ordered users waited. Over the next 3-4 months, T1's cancellation rate soared from an initial 2% to nearly 90%. Even those who had obtained purchase codes through employee channels fled, with a simple reason: after months of seeing negative news about Smartisan, they were scared off.

Luo Yonghao held out until October, when he had to announce a price cut of about 1,000 yuan. After the cut, the cheapest 16G 3G version sold for 1,980 yuan.

This angered many fans. Five months earlier, Old Luo had said, "I particularly hate phone manufacturers who set high prices at launch and then quickly lower them." His only possible reason for the price cut was: new generation products launching, with the previous generation needing to clear inventory. To sound convincing, he even declared: if it drops below 2,500, I'm your grandson.

In the end, T1's total sales in 2014 were just over 250,000 units. That year, China's smartphone shipments were 420.7 million units, with Xiaomi shipping 61.12 million units.

Such results were undoubtedly frustrating. Luo Yonghao believed his outspokenness had hurt the company.

That December, he gave his final personal speech at the Beijing Exhibition Center, "The Startup Story of an Idealist." He choked up and bowed, promising to learn to be a proper entrepreneur. He also announced that his personal Weibo password had been handed over to the company's PR department, with future posts subject to company review before publication.

From then on, the Weibo nickname "Luo Yonghao Keduo" disappeared.

Part Three

Facts proved that Luo Yonghao... (continues)