The domestic game of operating system: a single era or an end

Yang Ma

"Bill, we collectively control 100% of the world's desktop systems." "In 1997, Mr. Jobs, who had returned, joked with Bill Gates. At the time, Apple accounted for less than 3% of the world's PC desktop market share, and the remaining 97% belonged. What Jobs said was a joke and a truth. But now, the pattern has changed, and with the advent of the smart End era, Android has become a strong competitor. The only thing that hasn't changed is that American companies still dominate the global smart Terminal desktop.

Though perhaps vaguely uneasy, China has always been a passive recipient of the market. Efforts by Chinese companies to challenge this pattern have never been successful. The most typical example is the premature death of the "Red flag" operating system. February 2014 mid-June, the development of China's independent intellectual property rights operating system of the company Red Flag because the capital chain has broken, announced the dissolution of the company.

But the Snowden incident and the forced retirement of Microsoft Windows XP have made the Chinese government once again determined to develop its homegrown operating system. An intelligent operating system with the endorsement of the state will be the defense of the big curtain.

October 22, research Fellow of Chinese Academy of Technology, Academician NI told Economic Observer, if the registration is smooth, China's intelligent terminal operating system Industry Alliance (hereinafter referred to as "alliance", that is, China information Terminal OS alliance-cosa ) is about to surface at the end of October.

This is a non-profit national social organization composed of enterprise institutions, institutions and social groups in China's intelligent terminals-related fields under the guidance of the Central network security and Information technology leading group office. At present, the core economic entity-China operating System Alliance Store Limited (CSIP) is in the process of business registration approval.

The alliance to help the domestic operating system to replace Windows XP as the breakthrough point, and then vitalize the overall push, from the alternative desktop Win-dows operating system to replace the import of mobile operating system, and ultimately make the domestic intelligent terminal operating system to become the world's intelligent terminal operating system relay Apple, Google and Microsoft three outside the fourth home system.

This is a large market involving tens of billions of yuan of government procurement funds. In fact, more than that, in accordance with NI's description, under the impetus of the Alliance, the future domestic intelligent operating system will be in the government procurement, central enterprises, local state-owned enterprise, private enterprises, and finally reached the path of individual consumers, and gradually into every consumer in China, then "perhaps this will be a big market involving hundreds of millions of."

A single big or an end

According to NI's vision, the industry alliance will include 15 of China's Linux open source technology based intelligent operating system service providers, because these 15 system service providers need to have a unified ecological chain, that is, a large enough downstream application software developer Group, As a result, Ni borrowed from the Google App Store and the Apple App Store model to launch an app store.

As a result, application developers can develop by applying the standards published by the store, and when the application is enriched, it will, in turn, encourage consumers to accept domestic operating systems.

All along, since the government procurement, central enterprises are using genuine software, according to NI estimates, if the 100-600 yuan to the Microsoft to pay the minimum standard of 100 yuan, China every year to pay Microsoft a Bai of money. "If all this money is spent on homemade software, it's enough to feed those excellent domestic operating system companies," he said.

In the NI mouth of the 15 "service providers", the winning software Kirin system is currently the largest share of a relatively large, about 42% of the market share.

According to a tech technician, the wave has already been on the Kylin system on both the PC desktop side and the server side, and has been upgraded to version 6.0. These products are basically government procurement, especially the wave of the PC, "these products are only equipped with Kylin's system, no other system." The head of a Chinese enterprise business, Lenovo, which occupies the world's first position on PC shipments, said it would preinstall domestic operating systems in its own products, but it was not specifically Kirin.

For Kirin, there is another exciting news: October, the adoption of the winning company Kirin system of Dell products will soon start landing in the government procurement market.

Dell's corporate communications director said that Dell's cooperation with the winning software is mainly in the commercial computer products pre-installed Kylin operating system. As cooperation deepened, Dell continued to preinstall the operating system to other product lines.

Dell's behavior is highly representative of Li Zhenning, the software marketing director.

His argument is that Dell is not "doing it" with some marginal products, but is actually using the Kylin system in its important product line. Kirin System Core Development team Wu Qingbo, deputy director of software at the University of Defense at Hkust, believes that Dell's decision will lead to a shift in the market, and that other international vendors will consider it.

"The future, like Microsoft, an operating system to conquer the situation will not exist, the future operating system will be more open source, the coexistence of a variety of operating systems will be normalized, and now the wave of server products can carry at least five kinds of operating systems, Kirin is one of them." "Wave group executive President Wang Endong said to the economic observer.

Microsoft's focus in China will gradually shift to the cloud and terminals, and the operating system is no longer a major business model, said a senior executive in China, who declined to be named.

He believes that there is likely to be a trend in the future, several large OEM manufacturers will be pre-installed multiple systems, rather than only Microsoft one. "In this regard, Microsoft has embraced the fact. "he said.

Government hands

December 2010, two domestic operating systems-civil "winning the Linux" operating system and the PLA developed the "Galaxy Kirin" operating system in Shanghai formally announced the merger, the two sides thereafter to "the winning of Kirin" new brand reunification. The merger also allowed Kirin's operating system to take a larger lead over other domestic rivals.

Although the domestic operating system represented by Kirin is still very small compared to Windows, the support from the government has allowed them to see the dawn of a counterweight to the international giants. In the Government procurement provisions, one is "the use of domestic operating system notebook can be added two points of treatment." Of course, Dell is not only for the sake of bonus points in its core product line using Kirin system, because there are more products, is not in the bonus points.

In the current government procurement process, many products implemented percentile, the hardware, prices and services are almost no difference, if you want to adjust prices to add points will be reduced. For enterprises, if the use of domestic operating system can not lose profits to add two points, then the best choice for the enterprise.

As a multinational company, Dell's choice undoubtedly has some kind of exemplary role. For Kirin, funding is not important, the important thing is "policy."

On May 16 This year, the Chinese government Procurement network issued the "Information-type agreement on the supply of compulsory energy-saving products to tender Notice" to standardize government procurement behavior. The notification requires that all computer-class products do not allow the installation of the Windows 8 operating system. At the time, Microsoft China responded by saying that it was "very surprised by the news".

In late July, the latest information published by the Central government Procurement network showed that Microsoft's Windows 8 products did not qualify for the 21st issue of the general software procurement of the first batch of shortlisted products list, shortlisted for only Windows 7 products.

While it seems to be going well, it will take a long time for government-procurement policies to influence the choices of international manufacturers-the product manager told the Economic Observer that the global Agreement between HP and Microsoft began July 1, 2014, with all personal consumer PC products pre-installed with Microsoft Windows 8 Genuine operating system. Commercial PC PCs In addition to orders and custom products, in principle also 100% pre-installed Windows 8. But it is clear that whether it is a foreign PC manufacturer or a consumer's personal use habits, it is difficult to change the fact that the government is determined.

The determination to change

The development of domestic operating system and software experience to deep Jinshan Office software Vice President Shao that the Chinese government's domestic software policy changes and domestic software manufacturers development phase is basically consistent, can be divided into three stages:

The first is the free growth stage, this stage whether the software policy or the manufacturers are basically a new stage of development, the protection of intellectual property rights in this phase of the laws and regulations are not perfect, the market order is also more chaotic, domestic software enterprises, especially the basic software enterprise development is extremely slow.

Next for the normative management stage, time with China's accession to the WTO as a node, the Chinese government issued a number of policies, such as the "Computer Software protection regulations", "software Government procurement management measures (for trial implementation)", "the State Council on the issuance of encouraging software industry and the development of integrated circuit industry, and vigorously promote the software is genuine.

Now is the focus of protection support phase. At this stage, with the Prism Gate event as the landmark watershed, the government is beginning to realize the importance of information security.

It can be said that the importance of "information security" has been greatly improved.

In 2014, the Central government Procurement Agreement suppliers list, in addition to Microsoft's Windows system, the proportion of domestic operating system significantly increased, in the list of operating systems, there are deepin, Spgnux, the successful bidder Kylin (Neokylin), Zhongke Fang de, excellent Kylin, Microsoft, Aliyun, LONGX and other 8, of which Alibaba Group's YunOS as the only mobile operating system for the status of the finalists.

In Shao's words, the Chinese government must grasp the information security and the technology industry transformation, this is the domestic software ushered in the dividend period arrived-because the country gave real policy. "We can look at the United States, Japan, Korea in the beginning of the software has a clear government policy to protect local enterprises." ”

Shao that the Chinese government is merely a prescription. She cited an example: September 16, 2014, the CBRC issued the guidance on the application of safe and controllable information technology to strengthen the network security and information construction of the banking industry, and put forward that by 2019, the safety of controllable information technology in the banking sector has reached about 75% of the overall utilization rate.

In Shao view, the government emphasizes "controllable", the application of safe controllable information technology is increasing year by no less than 15%, which is a very specific and favorable policy for domestic software.

October 2010, Kirin Project received about 250 million yuan of "nuclear Shishou (for the core electronic devices, high-end general-purpose chips and basic software products, short)" Special funds, ranked first in the foundation of software support funds position. This year, the government has also given the use of domestic operating systems can be added to the government procurement of two points of preferential policies. "Our size is small, but it is profitable," he said. "Kirin System core development team Defense Hkust Computer Institute software Deputy director Wu Qingbo revealed that Kirin can be the operation of their own."

Ecological chain problem

Won the "Nuclear Shishou" support and government procurement plus policy of the successful winning Kirin also live up to expectations. This product in the market performance is also really very prominent, according to a Sadie market report, the winning company's Kirin system has now made the first domestic operating system market share.

But a study has led to thought-provoking: as many as 90% of users have been able to format their original operating systems or install dual systems after purchasing computers with Kirin systems in the PC World.

According to one person familiar with the situation, the Kylin system on the PC has been confronted with the ultimate fate of formatting or dual systems, perhaps because there are too few software to support Linux-and for now, the Lin-ux App Store has about 1000 applications. This is far from meeting the needs of the vast number of PC users.

Especially games, PC and notebook games are generally designed for Windows system, if the use of Kirin operating system, playing the game must find the Linux version of the game, and game makers rarely for the game to do another version of Linux.

This is the ecological problem of Linux. Today, there are countless applications based on Windows system development.

360 President Xiangdong that "our operating system has not been done for many years, there are many reasons, the most important thing is that the participation of enterprises is too little, mainly in colleges and universities, we know that the world famous operating system does not have a laboratory out, are made by enterprises, because it is the industrial chain, A high level of capacity that requires long-term sustainability. ”

Wu Qingbo that the Kirin ecosystem, small software is not enough, and business related to the industry less software. Use in the server domain is not a problem, but there is pressure on the desktop computer, mainly Windows is too strong. And Kirin is missing is to make this product to allow users to recognize. If the product user recognition, bring the user group will attract the development of the industry, there will be developers to develop software.

According to Wu's understanding, this is a chicken egg or egg chicken problem, if the use of more people, developers naturally more, but now to be used by someone first.

Of course, the PC only accounted for the winning software 30% of the business, the winning software Kirin operating system more useful in the military and other industries procurement market, such as some government agencies, the National Audit Office, front and so on. In this part of the market the use of Kirin system is very solid. "Kirin needs government support-that's for policy. Wu Qingbo pointed out: "Dell this time in the mainstream model to enable Kirin, I think should not only be driven by other manufacturers, but a problem to turn the market." ”

Shao also pointed out that the current domestic operating system is the biggest problem is to undergo market baptism, to enrich the user's use of the environment. Because the biggest problem that domestic software currently faces is the compatibility and suitability between upstream and downstream products.

One person who declined to be named said the country is now aware of this problem, so the Ministry of Industry and Science and Technology department is doing localization projects, that is, from the chip to the whole machine to the software are all made of domestic products, this year there will be 15 pilot units, next year there will be 100, then an estimated thousands of. "We still have a long way to go." "Wu Qingbo said. From the government level of support, perhaps for domestic operating systems to provide a better environment for growth, but ultimately determine its success or failure, can only be the market.