On April 20, the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022 kicked off, focusing on global economic recovery, sustainable development and other issues, pooling wisdom, enhancing mutual trust and reaching consensus.
In order to facilitate the interviews of Chinese and foreign journalists, a special "pen" has appeared in the news center, forum and exhibition area of the scene. This is the officially designated intelligent translation pen of the Boao Forum, from chips, AI algorithms to industrial design, all from Chinese enterprises, is an innovative product of the deep integration of China's Internet and manufacturing industry, representing the results of China's manufacturing transformation in the digital age.
The ten-year transformation of the Shenzhen factory has struggled out of the quagmire of cottage manufacturing
At this year's annual meeting of the forum, green recovery and sustainable development are one of the important topics. In the face of increasingly severe economic and energy conflicts, how to promote the innovative development of the digital economy and promote the transformation of the global manufacturing industry and industrial transformation is an urgent focus of discussion at the annual meeting of the Boao Forum.
This translation pen that appears in Boao is a vivid case of the digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry. Behind the translation pen, the technical solutions from Shenzhen, Shangtian and Zhiyuan, the tortuous development of the past 10 years, are also the epitome of China's manufacturing transformation.
The staff explains Youdao AI products
Pan Xiaolei, 45 years old this year, started a business from Beijing to Shenzhen 10 years ago, that is, he saw that Shenzhen is the capital of hardware and has a full set of industrial chains, thus founding Tianhe Zhiyuan. Pan Xiaolei said, "That was the craziest time for Huaqiang North, which could produce tens of thousands of tablets a day. The company first did flat design and oem processing, and made a net profit of more than 10 million yuan a year. ”
However, he did not get rid of anxiety. At that time, the Shenzhen factory was basically still following the "factory model" of China's traditional manufacturing industry: it was manufactured repeatedly, the gross profit was not high, and it was extremely sensitive to fluctuations in international trade prices. Pan Xiaolei realized that the strength of scientific and technological innovation is the core competitiveness of an enterprise, and if it wants to break through the bottleneck of the FOUNDC model, it is necessary to transform from manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing.
In 2013, the white-label flat plate market suddenly cooled, and the living space of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises continued to narrow. In 2016, Tianhe Zhiyuan moved from Nanshan District to Bao'an District, and the number of employees was reduced from 130 to 30, but it increased investment in technology research and development, turned to a subdivision track with more technical thresholds, and finally reversed the loss momentum and obtained stable profits.
In 2016, AlphaGo defeated human chess players, and a new wave of artificial intelligence struck. In 2017, AI was written into the government work report for the first time. The mainland's first national plan for artificial intelligence, the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan", was also released in this year, and the artificial intelligence was systematically laid out from the national level.
In the context of macro policies, forward-thinking enterprises take the lead in responding. In 2017, Pan Xiaolei established a new direction for the company, turning to the field of AI hardware and promoting the iteration of research and development capabilities.
The fusion of digital reality gives birth to a subversive innovation "technical power + product power" to redefine the word search experience
Under the background of double subtraction, intelligent education hardware for home-school learning has developed rapidly. According to the "2022 China Education Intelligent Hardware Industry Report", the market size of China's education intelligent hardware market in 2021 is 45.3 billion yuan, and the market size is expected to be close to 100 million yuan in 2024.
Different from the general electronic consumer products, intelligent education hardware and even all intelligent hardware is not a simple combination of software and hardware, but a new species born from the deep integration of traditional manufacturing and digital technology.
In December 2018, intelligent learning company NetEase Youdao was preparing to develop the second generation of dictionary pens, looking for hardware partners in Shenzhen, and took a fancy to Tianhe Zhiyuan, which has research and development capabilities. Relying on more than 10 years of AI technology precipitation in the field of translation, Youdao has broken through a variety of technical problems in the design of dictionary pens, among which the application of OCR image recognition and NMT neural network technology has subverted the traditional word search experience. Tianhe Zhiyuan is responsible for injecting NetEase Youdao's AI capabilities into the small electronic motherboard, so that the technology can achieve its capabilities on hardware.
The difficulty of cooperation between the two sides is that it is necessary to cross the thinking barrier between the digital economy and manufacturing. Pan Xiaolei said that the Internet is different from the manufacturing industry thinking, "software to change a bug can be fixed in half a day, but the hardware can no longer do iteration, the two sides need to continue to run in." Gangqiao, head of Youdao's intelligent hardware supply chain, also felt that the attitude of Shenzhen's hardware circles to Internet companies is cautious and careful, "because I don't know how much Internet companies will adhere to and invest in hardware." ”
In August 2019, the second generation of Youdao Dictionary Pen was officially released, which was widely welcomed by the market, and the sales of the hardware business achieved a five-fold growth rate in one year. In overseas markets such as Europe, america, And Australia, Youdao dictionary pen is also based on its own technology and hardware capabilities, occupying a market advantage, and helping international exchanges and communication with scientific and technological innovation.
Promote high-quality economic development from manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing to hand over China's answer
Today, Pan Xiaolei's company has doubled the company's net profit, achieving a net profit of tens of millions of dollars per year. The multiplier effect of the digital economy on the real economy has begun to show. During the development of Youdao dictionary pens, Tianhe Zhiyuan newly established a research and development laboratory, with R&D personnel accounting for 65% of the wisdom, and the construction of flexible supply chains was gradually advancing. After experiencing the baptism of Internet companies, the digital infrastructure of traditional manufacturing industry is gradually improving.
Behind a "pen" is China's answer to the intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry. In 2021, the outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan points out that it is necessary to give full play to the advantages of massive data and rich application scenarios, promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, empower the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, optimize the production process with data, and give birth to new industries, new formats and new models.
Liu Renlei, senior vice president of NetEase Youdao, said that innovation is the mission and responsibility of entrepreneurs. In the future, we will continue to increase investment in research and development, give full play to the advantages of scientific and technological innovation to explore the application of artificial intelligence in more learning scenarios, help the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, and contribute to China's intelligent manufacturing.
Pan Xiaolei said, "From software to hardware, to program design, from chips to production and assembly, we are Chinese our own things, and I am proud to participate in them." We are confident that more Chinese intelligent products will be born in the future, handing over a Chinese answer for the transformation of the world's manufacturing industry. ”