The developers of the two major operating systems signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the National Defense University on the same day. Both parties will jointly develop operating systems and jointly establish an operating system R&D center to jointly explore the market. They will also publish unified operating system products under the unified brand of “China Unicom Unicornâ€.
Our reporter was informed that the "National Cheng Kung University" list in the list of newly established nuclear high-grade projects has received a total of about 250 million yuan in "nuclear high base" special funds and ranked first in basic software support funds. According to the "nuclear high base" policy, Shanghai, where the project is located, will also use less than 1:1 capital support. Another major domestic operating system manufacturer, Zhongke Hongqi, also received a large number of "nuclear high base" funding support.
"The integration of the two major domestic operating systems is of great significance. Encouraging domestic operating systems to become bigger and stronger is an important goal of the nuclear high base. The integration of this successful bid and Kirin is a landmark event of the nuclear high base project." Han Naiping, general manager and member of the National Nuclear High-Level Experts Group, said in an interview with the newspaper that after integrating two of the three major domestic operating systems, it naturally formed the first brand of domestic operating systems.
This marked the official opening of the domestic operating system industry that had once emerged as a sign of vicious competition.
100 billion "nuclear high base"
The voice of a self-controllable operating system that has become stronger in China has a long history. The operating system is one of the most important links in the entire information industry. It directly relates to the country's information security and industrial security. Therefore, the Central Government has always attached great importance to the construction of domestic operating systems, especially the "nuclear high base" program.
"Nuclear High Base" is the abbreviation for core electronic devices, high-end general-purpose chips and basic software products. It was the "National Medium and Long-Term Scientific and Technological Development Plan Outline (2006-2020)" and manned space flight issued by the State Council in 2006. One of the 16 major science and technology projects tied for the lunar exploration project.
According to the central plan, the "nuclear high base" major project will continue until 2020, and the central government will allocate a budget of 32.8 billion yuan for this purpose. Together with local finance and other supporting funds, the total investment is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan. Among them, the average amount of funds for supporting domestic basic software each year exceeds 1 billion yuan.
The determination of the "nuclear high base" project once again provided a large amount of financial support for domestic operating systems.
At the same time, the reporter learned that companies need to bear higher assessment target pressure after getting this “nuclear high base†fund, and the central ministries and commissions responsible for nuclear high base implementation require domestic operating system manufacturers to achieve industrialization goals as quickly as possible and sell as many sets of products as possible. , how much output value is realized, and a certain market competitiveness is formed. This assessment target is for two years and the project will be reassessed during the “Twelfth Five-Year Planâ€.
"Domestic operating systems have indeed ushered in a good opportunity for development." Han Naiping, general manager of the successful bidder and member of the National Nuclear High-level Experts Group, said in an interview with the newspaper on December 16.
Recently, several major shareholders of the successful bidder software, China Software and Technology Service Corporation, Puhua Software, and East China Institute of Computing Technology have just completed a capital increase, and 200 million yuan of new funds have been paid, plus several hundred million yuan for the country. The "Nuclear Fundamental" funds will be allocated soon, allowing enterprises to have stronger capabilities to strengthen domestically produced operating systems.
However, Han Nai-ping stressed that even if these huge amounts of money are obtained, coupled with the strong integration of the Chinese military and civil-military officers and unicorns, China’s operating system vendors and giants such as Microsoft are still too weak.
Currently, in the country's classified systems, such as national defense, national security, public security, and government intranets, domestic operating systems are widely used.
However, in non-confidential markets, domestic operating systems have long been unable to pose a substantial threat to the monopoly hegemony of Microsoft and other international companies - at present, Microsoft's operating system monopolizes the desktops and servers of most Chinese users.
“China’s domestic operating system has made major breakthroughs in recent years.†A senior software industry expert who spoke on condition of anonymity commented that one of the more typical incidents was that Chinese financial companies recently collectively purchased Chinese-made operations. system. The expert said that domestically produced operating systems have many characteristics in the server area, including a much lower price than foreign products, and the use of open source systems is more conducive to the provision of customized services for large domestic companies.
The existence of domestic operating system manufacturers, at the market level, has created a customized balance for Microsoft with obvious monopolistic advantages, and forced Microsoft to lower prices in some areas. In the previous government procurement, domestic operating system manufacturers had forced Microsoft to significantly reduce the price, and to save the country a substantial amount of procurement funding.
Because Microsoft's Windows actually monopolizes the habits of individual users, domestic operating systems currently have poor sales in the personal desktop market, shipments are not high, and prices are low.
In the area of ​​server operating systems, home-grown operating systems have achieved a certain market space in recent years. Because server operating systems do not need to be compatible with personal user habits, the inexpensive and safe advantages of domestic operating systems have been fully realized.
At present, the server operating system accounts for 80% to 90% of the total share of domestic operating systems.
Domestically produced operating system "internal consumption" fanatics Prior to the integration of this bid with Kirin, there were strong competition relations among China National Red Flag, Zhongbiao, and Kirin's three major domestic operating system manufacturers. The overall market space for domestic operating systems was inherently limited. Several major domestic operating system manufacturers have shown a vicious competition trend in recent years.
Liu Wenqing, vice president of successful software, for example, said that a large-scale PC manufacturer in China had to set up a large number of PC computer products. According to the national regulations, it was necessary to pre-install the operating system and not allow bare-metal machines to be shipped. In this case, Microsoft, the successful bidder, and another domestic operating system vendor went to bid. As a result, the two major domestic operating system vendors pushed down each other's prices, and finally sold them at a price of a few dollars a set of "cabbage."
The Chinese operating system vendors are deeply saddened by the fact that some computer distributors have directly eliminated cheap pre-installed domestic operating systems in the sales process and replaced pirated versions of Microsoft's Windows operating systems with consumers, resulting in very few products on the market. I saw a computer with a domestic operating system installed.
For this, Liu Wenqing said that the internal friction between domestic operating systems has led to a large extent that operating system vendors have no intention to improve products based on market demand. Too low profits make manufacturers' innovation motives weak, thus creating a vicious circle.
At present, the number of domestic operating system vendors is still relatively small. "We have always had a strong feeling in recent years that it is very difficult for the basic software industry to be too dispersed." Liu Wenqing said that the operating system is a very special kind of software product, and economies of scale are very important.
Due to the small number of issued packages, some application software vendors are not willing to develop products on domestic operating systems. For example, current domestic operating systems cannot support functions such as online payment, leading to inconvenience for users.
“We once negotiated with a well-known domestic software developer and said why their software could not get their home-grown operating system. But the other party said that there are too few domestic operating system users and that the operating system vendors must pay 3 million yuan in development costs.†Shanghai Xu Yiling, director of the cooperation and development department of the Software Industry Promotion Center, took the example of the lack of users as a real problem faced by current domestic operating systems. As a result, domestic operating system manufacturers have the power to integrate with each other at the internal level.
After the integration of this bid with Kirin, it triggered another common guess in the industry: whether Kirin and another major Chinese operating system manufacturer, Kehongqi, have the possibility of further integration.
"(and the red flag) integration is not impossible, it may happen in the next step, integration is a big trend." A senior executive of the successful bidder told reporters that the integration of several operating system vendors involves too many levels, each operation Behind the system manufacturers are different shareholders, different guidance, so this high-level said that the integration of the successful bid and Kirin has been very difficult, at least took the first step in the integration of domestic operating systems.
For domestic operating systems, another major advantage is that the country is pushing a new wave of genuine government procurement. The State Council recently issued a document requesting that the legalization of the software of the central state organs should be completed by the end of May 2011, and the special inspection and rectification of software copyrights by provincial and municipal government agencies should be completed by the end of October 2011. China's major infrastructure software companies have recently conducted intensive bidding activities and expect to get a large single in this wave of government procurement.
In this regard, Xu Yiling, head of the cooperation and development department of the Shanghai Software Industry Promotion Center, stated that domestic basic software vendors need to be able to move in the market in order to truly improve their products and ultimately meet the needs of end consumers. Therefore, we must eliminate the practice of compulsory procurement of local basic software in some places.
"Compulsory procurement will cause companies to lose their incentive to innovate." Xu Yi-ling said that the government must force the purchase of domestically produced operating systems in classified areas, but in some non-confidential areas, it is necessary to liberalize the market to compete, while taking due consideration of domestically produced operating systems. .
Two major domestic operating systems teamed up against Microsoft
On December 16, the two domestic operating systems - the civilian "Winning Linux" operating system and the "Galaxy Yin Qilin" operating system developed by the People's Liberation Army, were formally announced in Shanghai. Both parties will jointly emerge in the future with the new brand "Zhonglin Qilin." In the market, dual-use operating systems will be developed.