Ministry of Industry and Information Technology data released in the first half of this year, China's software business income and profit to maintain double-digit growth, software business export income growth rate from negative to positive. Among them, the software business income of 623.5 billion yuan, an increase of 11.5%; software industry profits totaled 734.7 billion yuan, an increase of 15.7%; software business exports of 25.46 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 0.6%.
Experts believe that in the first half of the year, the big model of artificial intelligence to promote the upgrading of the software industry and empower thousands of industries. It is expected that in the second half of the year, the software technology innovation represented by cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, etc., will continue to promote the software technology, model, ecological change, and continue to give rise to new growth points, leading to a continuous improvement in business income.
Artificial Intelligence driven industrial upgrading
Sadi think tank informatization and software industry research institute deputy director Pu Songtao analysis, the first half of this year, the software industry in general continued the strong development momentum. Cloud computing, big data services represented by the information technology services industry to drive a significant role, revenue growth of 12.6% year-on-year, information technology services business income ratio to maintain a rising trend, has accounted for 67.7% of the software business income. Central region software development potential highlights, business revenue growth rate of 13.2% year-on-year, ranking first in the four regions. Among them, Shanxi, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan growth rate exceeded the national.
Zhao Gang, president of Saiji Industry Research Institute, summarized that in the first half of the year, the development of China's software industry showed three major highlights. Enterprises to increase investment in R & D, artificial intelligence large model and other emerging software is rising rapidly, driving the rapid development of chip design, basic large model, vertical large model and other new industry. Software related to the development and utilization of data resources maintains rapid growth, and software modes such as data governance, data labeling, data training, and emerging databases accelerate development. With the advancement of the integration of digital reality, industrial software has achieved rapid development and deeply empowered the industry.
“In the first half of the year, China's software revenue growth rate is remarkable, especially in the emerging field of artificial intelligence and other business represented by the big model is growing rapidly. 2024 is the year of the application of the big model, the big model for the industry, the field, the scene continues to deepen the innovation, and has become a major highlight of the development of the software industry.” Wei Daisen, vice president of Wave Group and general manager of Wave Tonsoft, said.
Tencent released its latest financial results show that the total revenue of 161.1 billion yuan in the second quarter of this year, an increase of 8% year-on-year. Among them, the enterprise service business revenue achieved double-digit growth rates, benefiting from the growth of cloud service business revenue and the growth of video number merchant technical service fees. During the quarter, Tencent increased its investment in artificial intelligence. For example, based on the basic model “Tencent mixed yuan” launched AI assistant Tencent Yuanbao. In addition, Tencent Cloud also released three major AI engine tools such as the big model knowledge engine, as well as high-performance computing services such as the proprietary cloud computing suite, which is committed to lowering the threshold of the big model industry landing, and shortening the distance from the model to the application.
In the first half of the year, the growth rate of software business exports realized from negative to positive. “This is mainly due to three factors.” Zhao Gang analyzed, first, in order to obtain incremental market opportunities, a number of software enterprises actively expand the market in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other markets, driving the growth of software products and technology exports. Secondly, platform enterprises such as Jitterbug, Ali, etc., have increased their efforts to expand overseas markets, driving the growth of related digital service trade exports. Third, the artificial intelligence big model enterprise actively expand overseas application scene, drive big model related products and services export enhancement.

According to Pu Songtao, the main factor lies in the export growth of software outsourcing services. From the demand side, the global digital demand continues to release, opening up new space for digital services of software enterprises. From the supply side, as the domestic software application continues to deepen, software enterprises continue to enhance the level of research and development, implementation and delivery, international competitiveness has been improved. From the policy side, China continues to increase the opening-up efforts, actively promote the “Belt and Road” economic and trade cooperation, and strive to promote the high-quality development of trade in services, which provides strong policy support for the “In the context of global economic integration, China's software enterprises through technological innovation and overseas market expansion, effectively enhance the international competitiveness of software products and services, and realize the export revenue from negative to positive.” Wei Daisen said.
Basic software and industrial software to accelerate the development of
The party's twentieth session of the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee adopted the “CPC Central Committee on further deepening the reform in a comprehensive manner, to promote Chinese-style modernization of the decision” put forward, grasp to build an independent and controllable industrial chain supply chain, sound and strengthen the integrated circuits, industrial motherboards, medical equipment, instrumentation, basic software, industrial software, advanced materials, and other key industrial chain development system and mechanism, and the whole chain of promoting the development of technology research and development, the results of the application.
Why emphasize the development of basic software and industrial software? Pu Songtao said that basic software is the key infrastructure of the digital economy, and its level of development is related to national security and industrial security. Industrial software, as the brain and nerve of industrial manufacturing, is a key support tool for promoting new industrialization and building a strong manufacturing country. In recent years, despite the fruitful innovation in the field of basic software and industrial software, due to factors such as the late start of industrial development and high degree of external dependence, it is still facing outstanding problems such as obvious supply short boards, lack of demand traction, incomplete ecological system, etc., and the long-standing situation of constraints has not yet been fundamentally changed.
“Basic software and industrial software is the root of the high-quality development of the software industry, but also to promote the important support of the new industrialization.” Zhao Gang frankly admitted that the current basic software and industrial software overall technical level is not high, the supply capacity of high-end products is insufficient, the promotion of industrial applications and other issues still exist, artificial intelligence operating system, electronic design automation, complex industrial analysis and other high-end basic software and industrial software is still a “neck” problem.
In the first half of the year, software product revenue of 1396.9 billion yuan, an increase of 9%, accounting for 22.4% of the proportion of industry-wide revenue. Among them, industrial software product revenue of 132.4 billion yuan, up 9%; basic software product revenue of 85.04 billion yuan, up 10.7%.
Pu Songtao introduced, this year, in the open source model boost, basic software ecological construction has made great progress. At the same time, the industrial software policy environment continues to optimize the intelligent process accelerated. In the first half of the year, the open source operating system root community openKylin community unit members exceeded 500; Unicom UOS ecology grew to 3,765,000 software, 406,400 hardware; Huawei Hongmeng ecological equipment more than 900 million units, more than 2,540,000 developers, on-line Hongmeng native applications more than 1,500.
Zhao Gang analyzed that in the first half of the year, basic software and industrial software showed the characteristics of localization, intelligence and scale. The development of large models has promoted the upgrading of basic software and industrial software, and emerging software such as artificial intelligence operating systems, deep learning frameworks, vector databases and other emerging software have performed outstandingly, and software such as industrial large models and industrial digital twins have accelerated their development. Basic software and industrial software enterprises to speed up the listing, mergers and acquisitions and reorganization process, market concentration and enterprise competitiveness to further improve.
Wei Dai Sen believes that the digital transformation of manufacturing industry to promote the depth of intelligent manufacturing is the core, industrial software in-depth application is the key, will effectively enhance the enterprise production efficiency and product quality, boost the development of new industrialization. Software companies to increase R & D investment in core technologies, deepen the cooperation between industry, academia and research, stimulate innovation. Cultivate high-end software talents, enhance collaborative innovation among enterprises, build an open and shared software innovation ecosystem, and promote the high-quality development of the software industry.
Deepening the Integration of Digital and Real
The scheduler of Lenovo Hefei Intelligent Manufacturing Base Lianbao factory has to deal with more than 8,000 orders per day, 80% of which are small-lot customized orders of less than 5 units, which come from more than 180 countries and regions, and the complexity of scheduling is no less than that of chess. Before the intelligent transformation, the factory can only rely on experienced schedulers to carry out semi-manual operation with the help of simple scheduling software, and a single end-to-end will take 6 hours. After intelligent transformation, the core algorithm in intelligent scheduling can complete the whole work within 1.5 minutes.
According to Zhao Gang, the key to digital integration is industrial digital transformation, and software is the core power of digital integration. Promoting the widespread application of artificial intelligence, big data, digital twins and other software technologies in the real economy is conducive to the realization of advanced production and operation modes such as scale customization, intelligent production, networked collaboration and end-to-end delivery, which significantly improves the production efficiency of the real economy, reduces the cost of production, strengthens the resilience of the industrial chain supply chain, fosters the new industry and new modes of the digital economy, and promotes the high-quality development of the economy.“Overall, it is expected that the annual software business revenue and profit will still maintain a relatively high rate of growth.” Pu Songtao said that the development of the software industry relies on both endogenous innovation momentum drive and external digital transformation demand pull. Driven by emerging technologies and driven by policy, the software industry is expected to usher in multiple growth drivers. In the second half of the year, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other emerging software technology innovations represented by the software will continue to promote the software technology, model, ecological change, and continue to give rise to new growth points in the business, driven by the continued improvement of business income. In addition, with the implementation of major national strategies and key areas of security capacity building related projects, key industries are expected to release the demand for software products and services. At the same time, whether the willingness and strength of government and industry users to invest in informatization can continue to remain strong also affects the space and potential of China's software industry market to a certain extent.
“Artificial intelligence will open a new era of digital economy and stimulate a new round of innovation boom in the software industry. It is expected that in the second half of the year, the software industry will still maintain a rapid growth trend, and the market increment will mainly come from the field of artificial intelligence big model, embodied intelligence software, data software, industrial software and so on.” Zhao Gang said.
Around expanding the market scale of the software industry, Zhao Gang suggests promoting the opening of key industry scenes, supporting innovative enterprises to obtain orders from the government and central state-owned enterprises for software applications, and promoting the deepening of the application of artificial intelligence large models and other technologies in key industry sectors; promoting platform enterprises to reconstruct the software ecosystem around the basic large models, etc., and driving more small and medium-sized software enterprises to symbiosis and win-win situation; and supporting software enterprises to go to the sea, and expanding the emerging market of software.
“The government needs to strengthen planning guidance and standards leadership, unswervingly increase the policy support for software enterprises, and promote the preferential policies should be enjoyed. Software enterprises should accelerate strategic cooperation with platform enterprises, large model enterprises, and industry leading enterprises, explore the transformation path of industry knowledge to automation and intelligence, and promote the industry knowledge production paradigm revolution.” Pu Songtao said. (Outlook)