htmlIn mid-November, IDC released the "China Industrial Internet Platform Manufacturer Evaluation 2021", which shows that six companies, Kaos, Shugen Internet, Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, XCMG Information, and PTC (US Parameter Technology Company), are located in the Leader Quadrant of Domestic Industrial Internet Platform Manufacturers.
IDC report also shows that in addition to the six industrial Internet leaders located in the Leader Quadrant, the main players of domestic industrial Internet also include Advantech, Lanzhuo, Baidu Smart Cloud, Oriental Guoxin, Unigroup, Lenovo, etc.
This report was shortlisted by IDC for half a year. After surveying nearly 30 related manufacturers and interviewing nearly 30 end users, 15 platform service providers that meet IDC standards were selected to be shortlisted.
Previously, McKinsey predicted that the industrial Internet could generate up to $11.1 trillion in revenue each year by 2025. According to the statistical results released by AII (China Industrial Internet Industry Alliance): "Preliminary statistics, there are currently 269 platform products in my country, and equipment, consumer goods, raw materials, and electronic information are the main application directions." A relevant official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology pointed out in his speech: "In terms of platform cultivation, the number of industrial Internet platforms has grown rapidly. At present, there are more than 50 regional platforms with certain regional influence in the industry." The report of
IDC puts six of the platform manufacturers in the leader quadrant, which means that with the recent implementation of a series of favorable industrial Internet policies, this field has also ushered in the Warring States Period with extremely fierce competition.
Redividing the conclusions of IDC report
In the conclusions of the IDC report, except for the manufacturers located in the Leader Quadrant, they are also manufacturers located in the main player quadrant, and the distinction is not very good. If we change the classification method, we may be able to see the current ranking status of Chinese industrial Internet manufacturers more intuitively.
We add four diagonal lines to the original image of IDC, which can make the classification method of IDC more detailed.
From this we can see that Shugen Internet and Kaos are in the first echelon, Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, XCMG Information, and PTC are in the second echelon, Advantech, Lanzhuo, and Baidu Intelligent Cloud are in the third echelon, Oriental Guoxin, Unigroup, Lenovo, and Gechuang Dongzhi are in the fourth echelon, Humi and Qiyun Technology are in the fifth echelon.
This division is cruel, but it can better reflect the current development status of China's industrial Internet: there are few top players, more middle-level players, and more backward players in the fourth and fifth quadrants are flooding the market.
So, how long can the Tree Root Internet and Kaos, located in the first echelon, lead? How long can
lead last? The six industrial Internet manufacturers in the Leader Quadrant in the
IDC report each have their own characteristics. These manufacturers are mainly divided into three schools:
, represented by Tree Root Internet, XCMG Information, and Kaos, mainly industrial Internet companies born from industrial manufacturing enterprises;
, second, Internet companies represented by Alibaba Cloud;
, third, IT manufacturers represented by Huawei Cloud and PTC.
Hand-established industrial manufacturing enterprises are represented by Haier and others. Their advantages are very obvious, that is, they have deep industry accumulation in industrial knowledge-how and professional technology. Applications vary greatly in each sub-industry in the industrial field. Even for the same equipment, the degree of deterioration will be different due to different working conditions. If you don’t understand the industry, even if the company collects a large amount of data and makes the data into various exquisite charts, you cannot understand the meaning behind the data, and you will not be able to produce valuable insights. With the rich experience of providing solutions to users in various segmented industries, traditional industrial giants have formed barriers that other factions are difficult to overcome.
Internet companies are represented by Alibaba and others. They have advanced technologies and experience in cloud computing, big data analysis, and software services.Compared with industrial enterprises, Internet companies have a more general definition of the industrial Internet. For example, Alibaba once promoted C2M, which takes into account the entire product life cycle from R&D, production to consumption, and then to feedback and iteration. The focus is on how consumers' feedback after the product is produced can affect the manufacturer's iterating and improving the product again. The massive amount of C-end data they have accumulated is their sharpest weapon to break the circle.
Traditional IT software companies are represented by Lianhuawei and others, and their advantages are quite similar to those of Internet companies. In the future concept of industrial Internet platforms by many industry insiders, it should be similar to a mobile app store, with software for various purposes available for industrial customers to download and use - perhaps to monitor energy consumption, perhaps to ensure system data security, or to perform predictive maintenance of equipment. For IT companies, App development is their old profession and is familiar with it.
Specifically, interconnected devices are the foundation of the industrial Internet. Whoever connects to large-scale key equipment data and even related production process data will gain the initiative in the construction of the industrial Internet.
provides reusable high-value-added analysis and optimization functions. It is a key core capability of the industrial Internet. It provides in-depth applications in the industry based on equipment and process data, and makes full use of AI analysis technology to achieve high-value-added optimization functions.
Developing an open empowerment ecosystem is a necessary path to the success of the industrial Internet. With a proven industrial Internet platform, empowering the construction of the ecosystem, and using lower technical thresholds and faster verification practices, users can focus more on their own industry fields and obtain more targeted solutions.
It can be said that the six manufacturers located in the IDC Leader Quadrant each have their own strengths and are not competing on the same dimension, so this pattern may last for several years.
According to our re-division of IDC conclusions, the temporary leading companies are Shugen Internet and Kaos, both from industrial manufacturing companies. They have accumulated a large number of users by relying on home appliances with good reputation, so they have created a large-scale customization model centered on user experience, effectively connecting the industrial Internet with user needs, allowing users to participate in the full process design, realize the differentiation of the industrial Internet, and gather ecological resources from all parties to achieve continuous ecological evolution. Their leading position comes from their decades of deep cultivation in the industry, and it may be difficult to be shaken in the short term.
Main players catching up with hopeless
According to the IDC report, there are also many "main players" in the industrial Internet field, including Advantech, Lanzhuo, Baidu Smart Cloud, Oriental Guoxin, Unigroup, Lenovo, etc.
According to our new division, these "main players" are mainly located in the third echelon and behind. They are called "main players" and IDC has given these manufacturers face. In fact, these manufacturers are not "main" in the field of industrial Internet, and are even dispensable.
, a representative manufacturer in digital transformation, believes that the industrial Internet is not an IT version and a cloud version of SCADA, but a system that realizes value when emerging, requiring a wider access scenario and high-value-added analysis and optimization scenarios. It absorbs the latest IT technology and integrates existing OT technology and industry-in-depth applications. Because its PaaS platform-based open functions provided by cloud architecture technology can support more low-code generation and customized application apps, it is known as an industrial operating system.
Based on the new trend of IT/OT system integration, based on the mature DCS system of the process industry and the PLC+SCADA system widely used in discrete industries, the industrial Internet platform is becoming a good supplement to the traditional industrial digital transformation path.
In other words, these "main players" are still outside the door to explore the industrial Internet and have not been involved in the core of the industrial manufacturing and production link.
, especially Internet cloud manufacturers represented by Baidu Cloud, it is even more difficult to catch up with the top players. First, Internet cloud manufacturers do not understand the essence of industry, and second, their business models do not support such manufacturers to enter the essence of industry. Baidu, which understands AI, will inevitably not become mainstream in the industrial Internet field because it does not understand industry.
However, industrial Internet manufacturers such as Gechuang Dongzhi are incubated internally by TCL manufacturing companies, and they are more likely to achieve a counterattack in the future.
The essence of the industrial Internet is industry, not the Internet.
"Three Mountains" of the Industrial Internet
The industrial Internet era is running towards us at the speed of light.
connects upwards industrial optimization applications and downwards massive equipment. With its advanced computing architecture and high-performance cloud computing infrastructure, the industrial Internet platform can achieve the integration, storage and computing of massive heterogeneous data. Solve the problem that the explosive growth of industrial data processing does not match the computing power of existing industrial systems, and accelerate the data-driven networking and intelligence process in the manufacturing industry.
But there are still "three mountains" on the road to industrial Internet development:
is the network protocol. The connection between different industrial equipment is an extremely complex issue. Industrial equipment of different periods, different brands and different protocols, such as machine tools, heat treatment equipment, automatic production lines, flexible production lines, special machine equipment, etc., have data communication protocols in different formats. Every enterprise that produces equipment will develop the equipment interface protocol first according to the functional needs of its own equipment. Whether it needs to be compatible with the equipment of other enterprises is not the first consideration. According to Zheng Bingquan, a senior expert of Asia Control Company who has been engaged in device networking for more than 20 years, if the above-mentioned devices are required to communicate and dialogue without barriers between them, at least 5,000 kinds of communication protocols are required. And this is a long process of precipitation and accumulation.
The second is a knowledge barrier. As the saying goes, apart travel is like a mountain. One of the biggest achievements of the industrial revolution is the industry/professional segmentation. Different industries/specialties have different subdivision technologies and unique professional knowledge. That is, no matter how mature an electronic product industrial Internet platform is, it is unlikely to be adopted by aviation companies; no matter how good an industrial Internet platform of medical equipment, it is unlikely to be adopted by engineering machinery companies, because on the "other people's home" platform, there is no industry/professional application scenario and industrial APP that supports these scenarios.
The third is platform interconnection. There are so many industrial Internet platforms in China. Can these "platforms" be connected? The answer is "cannot join". Then the separatist rule of the industrial Internet platform became an inevitable result. The Warring States Period of the industrial Internet platform is still unknown when it will finally end.
The industrial Internet industry is so hot that it is bubbling, but its results are very slow. In the era of accustomed to the "fast pace of the Internet", most spectators always feel that they are watching the flowers in the fog, and even question whether this so-called trillion-dollar market and several times the benefits of the consumer Internet is a "pseudo-hot" and will it bring aphrodisiac fast effect or the revival of all things in spring?
is different from the consumer Internet. The high requirements for industrial precipitation determine that it cannot simply replicate such fast-food thinking. In a few years, it has become a phenomenal hit and achieved exponential empowerment of benefits.
The road to industrial Internet development is long, so the road ahead for upgrading the manufacturing industry is long and the future is promising after all. This report by
IDC basically defines the market structure of Chinese industrial Internet platform manufacturers in the next five years. In this field, "slow" is a kind of productivity.
In recent years, industrial Internet policies sorted out
"Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Term Goals for 2035" clearly proposes to actively and steadily develop the industrial Internet, and regards the industrial Internet as a key industry in the digital economy, proposes to build an independent and controllable identification resolution system, standard system, and security management system, strengthen the research and development and application of industrial software, cultivate and form an industrial Internet platform with international influence, and promote the construction of the "Industrial Internet + Intelligent Manufacturing" industrial ecosystem.
In the past three years, the country has issued policies related to the industrial Internet at different levels, requiring the acceleration of the construction of new infrastructure such as the industrial Internet, emphasizing that the integration of 5G and the industrial Internet will accelerate the construction of digital China and smart society, accelerate China's new industrialization process, and inject new impetus into China's economic development.
Let's see what major policies are there:
From these policy orientations, we can see that the rules and platforms for competition in the industrial Internet market have been established, and we will wait for companies to take the stage to perform.
