Reporter Xie Lan
"Hanwang has caught up with the era of artificial intelligence, which is really good for us." On January 15, Hanwang Building, located in the hinterland of Zhongguancun Software Park, was interviewed by a reporter from Securities Daily, and Liu Yingjian, chairman of Hanwang Technology, could not hide his excitement.
From the development of Chinese character recognition technology in 1984 to the national science and technology progress award, from the establishment of Hanwang Technology to the listing of the company, in the past 30 years, Liu Yingjian and Hanwang Technology have experienced many highlight moments in the PC and software era, and have also tasted loneliness in the Internet and mobile Internet era.
However, it is also with the scientific research determination of "ten years of grinding a sword" that this old national high-tech enterprise, in the super outlet of the artificial intelligence era, is waiting for the opportunity period of willow and dark flowers.
The era of artificial intelligence is thick and thin
Specializing in "from 0 to 1"
Han Wang, meaning "the king of Chinese character input". Whether it is handwriting recognition technology, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, image recognition technology, as one of the few enterprises in China's IT industry with independent core technology, Hanwang Technology undoubtedly has self-confidence.
"We are the grandfathers of the realm of identification." Liu Yingjian smiled. From handwriting boards, e-pens to electric paper books, for consumers, Hanwang Technology has many familiar products. Samsung, Sony, LG, Nokia and other international manufacturers have also adopted Hanwang's independent research and development of technology, and their handwriting recognition technology accounts for nearly 90% of the global mobile handwriting market.
He does not deny that Hanwang Technology has experienced a low point in the Internet and mobile Internet era. "It's not about missing out on the Internet and the mobile Internet era, every company has its own good points." Liu Yingjian said. In fact, thanks to the continuous focus of Hanwang Technology in the field of recognition for many years of innovative research, Hanwang Technology from the realization of handwriting input to solve input problems, and then to identify problems, and now developed into "let the machine understand you better", Hanwang Technology has accumulated a lot of hair, paving a road to the era of artificial intelligence.
"Artificial intelligence is generally embedded in a product or application." Liu Yingjian believes that the era of artificial intelligence is actually not a juxtaposition concept with the Internet and the mobile Internet era, it is more of a kind of ability to improve, for this ability to find a landing application scenario, to create a combination of software and hardware products, is what Hanwang Technology has been good at.
In his view, since the day of its inception, technology-driven, specializing in "from 0 to 1" innovative research and development has become the corporate gene of Hanwang Technology.
"In our bones we are not afraid of anything, there is nothing that cannot be done." For example, he said, "We are now making a bionic flapping bird, and the breakthrough of global commercialization from 0 to 1 is what we have achieved." The bird will let it walk on the ground in the future, and the next step is to let it stand on the pole and dare to propose goals. ”
It is understood that in order to support and encourage long-term technology research and development reserves, Hanwang Technology has always had a "technical shelf" system tradition. "What are the ideas on technology every year, regardless of the market situation, you do research and development first, and then talk about where to use it?" Liu Yingjian said, "The company has this patience. ”
Liu Yingjian also revealed to reporters that Hanwang Technology currently has technical reserves and strategic layouts in the direction of cutting-edge technologies such as natural language understanding, olfactory recognition, and bionic robots.
Pen intelligent interactive business:
From sitting on a cold bench to standing on the air vent
Opportunities are always left to those who are prepared. As far as Hanvon Technology is concerned, its pen intelligent interaction business is a very typical example.
Hanwang Technology's previously disclosed third quarter report of 2020 shows that the company achieved a net profit of 70.23 million yuan in the first three quarters, an increase of 133.04% year-on-year, and the main reason for the growth of performance was the outbreak of digital painting business in the pen intelligent interaction business, and the operating income in a single quarter was 280 million yuan, an increase of 183% year-on-year. As a global digital painting product and digital handwriting solution provider under Hanwang Technology, Hanwang Youji achieved a net profit of 57 million yuan in a single quarter, a substantial increase year-on-year.
For Hanwang Technology, the practical use of pen intelligent interaction is the "old" technology that the company has already owned. As early as 1985, liu Yingjian's research and development of the "online handwritten Chinese character recognition device" obtained an invention patent, creating a new application era of non-keyboard Chinese character input. In 2007, Hanwon Technology broke through the two key technologies of "wireless passive" and "micro-pressure precision sensing". Among them, wireless passive electromagnetic touch interaction technology has long been monopolized by the global hand-drawn electronic tablet giant WACOM before Hanwang Technology.
However, for a considerable period of time, although Hanwang Technology has also established a joint venture with partners to develop related products, it mainly licenses or sells these technologies and their components to other manufacturers.
"The market has a slow heating process, and for a while it was a very marginal product." Liu Yingjian said, "I didn't expect this business to suddenly break out, and the growth was particularly fast. ”
"Sales went up all at once." For the outbreak of pen intelligent interaction business, Liu Yingjian's analysis believes that there are mainly two reasons: First, the take-off of the creative industry. The rapid development of industries such as movies, animation special effects, and comics, as well as the digitization of the entire design industry, have greatly increased the demand for digital drawing boards and painting screens; the second is the opening of overseas markets. In recent years, Hanwang Youji has begun to focus on overseas online sales, directly selling to more than 60 countries and regions around the world through more than 20 cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, e-Bay, Express, wish, Lazada, etc.
Of course, there are also reasons behind this china's manufacturing cost advantage. "Digital painting products are transitioning from drawing boards to painting screens. Painting screens sell for a few hundred dollars, and WACOM sells for thousands of dollars. He said.
It is also based on the optimistic judgment of this market prospect that Hanwang Technology is determined to fully develop the digital painting business. In the first half of 2019, Hanwang Pengtai, a subsidiary of Hanwang Technology, and investors have twice increased their capital to Hanwang Youji, a subsidiary of Hanwang Pengtai Holdings.
"The pen intelligent interaction business has become our core position at present. In the future, with the help of the transition from the painting board to the painting screen, cut into the professional market, and rely on the cost advantage, penetrate into the low-end market, the future of this business will be in the strategy of the expansion of the long growth dividend expectations. Liu Yingjian said.
Four directions layout of artificial intelligence applications
Optimistic about the outbreak of OCR business
From technology to commercialization, Liu Yingjian said that Hanwang Technology is mainly based on four major driving logics: one is to achieve breakthroughs in technology, that is, technology-driven; second, in-depth research and collection of user needs, that is, user-driven; third, government-driven, whether it is digital or new infrastructure, government policies have a great driving force; fourth, market-driven, different from user-driven, with the nature of the trend, to find the key "rely on" on the "outlet".
It is understood that in the face of the industrial opportunities coming from the era of artificial intelligence, Hanwang Technology has now laid out four major directions of "brush touch control and trajectory", "OCR and big data", "face and biometric recognition" and "intelligent terminal products", fully opening the door to the era of intelligent interaction and promoting the application of artificial intelligence technology in various fields.
In addition to the pen intelligent interaction business, Liu Yingjian is very optimistic that the OCR identification business will take the lead in the outbreak of artificial intelligence industry applications.
"Previously, the application of our OCR recognition was mainly in the National Library, the Palace Museum and other 'national team' institutions, which have a lot of texts and archives that need to be digitized, and the application is relatively professional and niche." However, with the rapid development of the digital economy, the government, enterprises have intensified digital transformation, everyone's acceptance of artificial intelligence has gradually become higher, since last year, this piece of business has suddenly risen, demand can be said to blossom everywhere. Liu Yingjian gave an example, "Like Tianjin, it is ready to digitize all the talent files, and Union Hospital must also digitize all the medical records, and then structure it, which can solve the problem of case application and patient service in one stop." ”
This is also regarded by him as another major core position of Hanwang Technology at present. "Moving human history online and digitizing all traditional things is a trillion-dollar market in itself." You can do the math, now a page of paper to identify it is about four cents, so how many such things do humans have? He laughed, "And the identification field Hanwang did the earliest, long time, good technology, high recognition in the market." As long as there is a tender, there will definitely be a Han King. ”
At the same time, the business lines of Hanwang Technology are also "ready to go" and are accelerating the launch of artificial intelligence products and solutions. On January 18, Hanvon Technology held the first new product launch conference of 2021, launching seven artificial intelligence products in one go, including bionic flapping bird, face recognition access control, painting screen, e-pen and intelligent office book.
"There is innovation in each of these products." What makes Liu Yingjian feel excited and confident is that with the rise of Huawei and other enterprises, more and more Chinese technology companies have begun to become pioneers in scientific and technological innovation.
Take the bionic flapping wing bird, which is also the world's first set of high-end intelligent bionic technology in one of the autonomous flight intelligent flapping wing machine bird products, its flight attitude is flexible, lightweight, especially close to the real birds in nature, in some special industry market areas have more imagination space.
"We were the first to do this product, and this time we launched a larger winged bird, and there are many people around the world who are particularly interested." Liu Yingjian said, "In the toy list in the United States, this product was nominated for third place. Our R&D staff are very proud. ”
"Just like Huawei's 5G, we hope that Hanvon will also deepen the world's awareness that China has become a high-tech leader." Liu Yingjian said loudly to reporters.