Text | Zhang Ying Ren Shibi
Recently, thanks to the appearance and interaction of "virtual digital people" in mainstream New Year's Eve parties and various programs, the imagination space infiltrated by the metaverse in the content side has been further opened. On January 1, Hunan Satellite TV's "Hello Saturday" debuted, and the show launched a new combination: He Jiong, Cai Shaofen, Wang Hedi, Qin Xiaoxian, Brigitte, and a digital host named "Xiao Yang" as a long-term lineup of "host + guest group". At the same time, in the 2022 Jiangsu Satellite TV New Year's Eve concert, the virtual person Teresa Teng Lijun, who was synthesized through the most advanced technology, appeared on the stage to sing with the popular singer.
Affected by this, in the two trading days since New Year's Day as of January 5, the concept of virtual digital people has been out of the circle, and the sector has risen by 7.84% during the period, far outperforming the Shanghai Composite Index (a cumulative decline of 1.23% during the period). However, on January 6, the virtual digital human concept sector showed a correction, and the overall decline was 2.62%.
In this regard, Liu Youhua, head of private equity ranking network research interviewed by the "Securities Daily" reporter, said, "The virtual digital human field is in the development stage, and its application field is very broad, and the future will be improved with the virtual digital in terms of technology and content richness." At present, the commercialization logic of virtual digital people is gradually clear, the willingness of users to pay is also very strong, and the scale of consumers is constantly expanding. It is foreseeable that the virtual digital human field has a very large market prospect in the future. ”
The future market space in the field of virtual digital people is 270 billion yuan
Virtual digital people are a comprehensive product of multiple human features (appearance characteristics, human performance ability, human interaction ability, etc.) that exist in the non-physical world, are created and used by computer means such as computer graphics, graphic rendering, motion capture, deep learning, speech synthesis, etc. With the development of virtual reality technologies such as AR/VR/XR, virtual people may get rid of the limitations of avatars and map to the physical world. The highly anthropomorphic nature of virtual people distinguishes them from general virtual characters, thus being able to assume more social functions.
CITIC Securities said that from the perspective of application, virtual people can be divided into two categories: shaping human design and image, personality-type virtual people who highlight personality charm, and practical virtual people who highlight practical value, and are subdivided into four sub-categories: content type and image type, as well as functional and virtual avatar. The technical barriers of personality-type virtual people are relatively limited, mainly focusing on IP and operational capabilities: 1. For content-based virtual people, the core lies in the value and derivative capabilities of the IP behind them; 2. For image-type virtual people, standing out from many virtual people requires excellent human design and operation capabilities. Practical virtual people will become the key infrastructure of the metaverse, the core lies in technical capabilities, and the technical level of modeling, driving, rendering, and artificial intelligence is relatively high. Virtual human business model and future prospects: We believe that virtual people have the advantages of long life cycle, controllable behavior, multi-threaded and long-lasting work, strong thinking and computing power, and good plasticity, and the business prospects are very broad after the technology matures.
Since 2021, a number of giant companies have launched virtual digital people. Among them, in December 2021, Vanke selected an outstanding new employee "Cui Xiaopan". It is reported that "Cui Xiaopan" was officially "hired" on February 1, 2021, and with the blessing of the system algorithm, "Cui Xiaopan" played a role in various receivables/overdue reminders and work abnormality detection with an efficiency that was thousands of times higher than that of humans. At 00:00 on January 1, 2022, BlueFocus released the first digital virtual person "Su Xiaomei", which is not only the iconic landing of the BlueFocus meta-universe strategy, but also opens a new layout of the BlueFocus virtual IP business.
In the view of Southwest Securities, the virtual human market continues to expand, and industrial policies release positive signals. First, the market side: According to the "Virtual Digital Person Deep Industry Report", it is expected that by 2030, the overall market size of China's virtual people will reach 270 billion yuan; second, the policy side: Since 2017, China has included core technologies such as virtual reality and AI into the scope of encouragement, and at the same time proposed to accelerate the development of the virtual reality industry. With the iteration of technology upgrading and the decline in production costs, the C-end application of virtual people or will be popularized on a large scale, and the industry is expected to enter the fast lane of development.
11 concept stocks were praised by institutions
Since the New Year, as of January 5, the virtual digital human concept plate has risen against the market, and its overall rise has soared by nearly 8%, the cumulative increase of 2 concept stocks such as Silk Road Vision and Yunnan Tourism has exceeded 20%, and the cumulative increase of 6 concept stocks such as Tianshen Entertainment, BoRui Communication, Jiachuang Video, BlueFocus, Aofei Entertainment, Chinese Online and so on has also increased by more than 10% during the period.
On January 6, the virtual digital human concept sector fell sharply by more than 2.6%, and the stock prices of 9 concept stocks rose, and Yunnan Tourism and Phillips rose by more than 6%.
For today's virtual digital human concept plate has a sharp correction, is it an opportunity to "get on the car"? Liu Youhua said, "As for the opportunity to 'get on the car' of the virtual digital person track, it depends on whether it is a 'long-distance car' or a 'short-distance car': in the short term, because of the pursuit of funds, it has accumulated a large increase, and to a certain extent, the future growth of the industry has been overdrawn, but if the cycle is extended, considering the growth space of the virtual digital human industry market, the virtual digital human industry is a track with investment value." ”
Yang Delong, chief economist of Qianhai Open Source Fund, told reporters, "Virtual digital people belong to the emerging industry, through the virtual realization of technology to show some scenarios, the future application scope of this technology is relatively extensive, especially in the field of games more applications, the current commercialization may take time, now more is the concept of hype." Virtual digital people are the new track in the current A-share market, so their recent performance is more prominent, and the future development space is relatively large. The virtual digital human sector also needs to study the fundamentals in the future, and leading enterprises with performance support can focus on it. Yang Delong reminded investors that the sector has risen too much recently, and it is not appropriate to re-position and not to chase high excessively.
Long Hao, chairman of Jinding Assets, told reporters, "At present, the virtual digital human industry is in its infancy, and its technical solutions have formed a stable pattern, but in terms of the application layer, it is still necessary to further explore the function of virtual people in identifying the external environment and communicating and interacting with people, and building an application industry chain ecology for virtual people in social activities, military industry and industry, medical treatment, etc., which will also become the landing of the future meta-universe track, and the landing of each application layer in its industrial chain is expected to cause fluctuations in the virtual digital human track. Therefore, we recommend that for the leading enterprises in the relevant sub-sectors that benefit from artificial intelligence, intelligent voice, virtual platforms and professional audio solutions, every technical retracement is a good opportunity to intervene. ”
In the context of the future development of the industry, the recent institutional attention to the concept of virtual digital people has also begun to rise. According to the statistics of Flush, a total of 11 virtual digital human concept stock institutions have given bullish ratings such as "buy" or "overweight" in the past 30 days. Among them, 6 concept stocks such as Mango Super Media, Pingzhi Information, Blue Focus, Jebsen Shares, Fengyuzhu and Huayang Lianzhong have been jointly recommended by institutions 2 or more times during the period, and the performance of the future market is worthy of attention.
A virtual digital human concept stock that saw its share price rise on January 6
Watchmaking: Ren Shibi