Nanjing Prudential to make a low-key profit

About the good interview was forced to postpone for several hours, the Nanjing sky under the rain, Wang Jiping busy to receive one after another admiring customers, a series of meetings, customers carefully asked the product can be delivered date.

This is a low-key but in the mobile internet industry reputation of the company: it helps Huawei, Tcl and many other mobile phone manufacturers to develop their Android smartphone system, and to help SAIC-Rong and other carmakers to develop vehicles in the car's Android vehicle navigation system, revenue stable and reliable.

"The development of prudential benefits from the explosion of the Android system. "Nanjing Cheng-Mai technology Wang Jiping regrets, when Google developed this open but there are many loopholes in the mobile operating system, the market suddenly appeared in a large number of systems of two development needs, and Prudential is to seize this opportunity to rise rapidly, and at 100% annual speed expansion, The company, which makes smartphone software outsourcing, has grown to nearly 2000 people.

Wang Jiping revealed that last year Prudential Technology's revenue has exceeded 150 million, this year expected to double the revenue, prudential technology in the second half of this year will be in the gem to submit the listing application. When most mobile internet companies are still making a profit and burning money, Nanjing Cheng Mai has become one of the earliest harvest in the mobile internet wave.

Opportunity: Android Apps explode

In the founder of Prudential Technology before, Wang Jiping has been in the mobile phone software industry for many years.

Wang Jiping, who graduated from Peking University in 1991, chose to go to the State University of New York for further study and stay in the United States after graduating. He worked as an engineer for 5 years in the American intelligence company and was sent abroad.

In 2001, Wang Jiping founded a mobile soft technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. (Mobilesoft 2¥q), which specializes in the development of cell phone software. At the time, the company helped handset makers develop a variety of mobile apps, including more than 10 of mobile communications applications, as well as operating system platforms for smartphones and feature handsets, and optimized Linux software developed for mobile communications devices. In the 2004, the company was bought by PalmSource Inc., which is a spin-off of Palm, which mainly develops mobile operating systems.

A visit to Prudential's VC investors to reporters that Wang Jiping in the mobile phone software industry's long-term experience is highly valued by investors, the founder of this experience for Wang Jiping is very important, these years Wang Jiping accumulated rich in the development of Linux based mobile phone operating system of the underlying design experience, and accumulated a number of rich technical personnel after the start of the Android system, the domestic once very lack of such talent, and into the earlier Wang Jiping to occupy the first opportunity.

2006 Wang Jiping came out of the establishment of prudential technology, still the main development of mobile phone software. And in the early acquisition of IDG investment.

Wang Jiping told reporters that the company finally chose to outsource the main business rather than independent research and development products, because the environment at that time rely on manufacturers to sell products authorized fees are difficult to receive money. Wang Jiping once visited India once, impressed by India's booming software outsourcing industry, and decided to start outsourcing mobile software.

Soon after, in early 2007, Apple's iphone smartphone was a shock to the world, and Google unveiled its most successful Android smartphone operating system.

When I first saw the Android system, Wang Jiping, with richer experience in mobile phone systems, was acutely aware of the opportunity.

Around 2009, Android began to become very popular all over the world, with major handset makers scrambling to get into the Android camp.

At this point, most mobile phone manufacturers, including PC manufacturers, have encountered a small problem, that is, the Android system requires a large number of two development work, and mobile phone manufacturers are mostly lack of relevant experience.

Prior to the PC era, Microsoft will be operating system development work all to help PC manufacturers "fix", PC manufacturers only need to make a choice in the system provided by Microsoft to simply fit. But the Android system is very different, Google only released a semi-finished products, mobile phone manufacturers need to do a lot of redevelopment work.

Soon after, Prudential received orders from Huawei and helped Huawei develop its first Android phone system. Since then, there are TCL and many other mobile phone manufacturers to choose its system two development outsourcing to Prudential Michael.

Most of Prudential's engineers are working on the localization of the Android operating system, which takes place at the bottom of the operating system. Because each mobile phone hardware configuration is different, such as the use of various manufacturers of chips, touch screen, memory, configuration varies, so each cell phone in the factory before the need for its Android system in the drive to make changes, adapt, so that the hardware and software can be closely coordinated.

In addition, mobile phone manufacturers often need personalized user interface (UI), which is the first impression of the mobile phone after the consumer opened the smartphone, Prudential also spent a lot of energy to help the handset manufacturers to design a beautiful, practical UI.

In general, when Google launches a new version of the Android system, Prudential will take 3-4 months to analyze and test it, and then to develop on this basis, to transform it into the mobile phone manufacturers need to look.

Wang Jiping says the handset makers have the highest stability requirements. There are a lot of loopholes in the Android native system, so the testing of a modified system is very cumbersome and requires a lot of processes, such as white box test and black box test.

"In a model system, we found more than 10,000 bugs (vulnerabilities)." Wang Jiping to the reporter recalls. So there are as many as 150 light testers in the company.

The popularity of the Android operating system has also surprised many non-mobile phone industry customers into such as SAIC's prestige sedan in its own vehicle navigation system to carry the Android system, and outsourcing orders to prudential development.

Wang Jiping said, including car navigation, medical equipment, smart television and other industries are a large number of

Android Two development requirements, the market and mobile software outsourcing is also huge. In addition, companies such as Foxconn, BYD (002594, shares), Intel, MediaTek and other business-to-business customers have outsourced large orders to Prudential.

By contrast, Prudential seems less interested in the development of a single app for mobile apps than it is because the order size of app outsourcing is often small, and sometimes an order negotiation takes two or three months, and real development can be done in one months. "Too tired to do it. Wang Jiping says most of the company's energy is still in the industry's big customers.

Apple's iOS software outsourcing seems to have struggled to scale at home compared with Android outsourcing, because Apple's closed system makes it very limited to what outsourcing vendors can do. Now Prudential has dozens of iOS outsourcing team, the business is also booming, But the nature of Apple's system has made it difficult to become the mainstream of future mobile software outsourcing.

Competition: Fight scale, spell efficiency

The above survey of Prudential Technology VC investors said that before the inspection prudential, they pre-contract mobile phone software outsourcing industry has the opportunity to produce two to three listed companies.

Industry judgment, there is the opportunity to become a listed company mobile phone software outsourcing enterprises must meet two conditions, one is to enter the industry earlier, the second is to reach a certain scale soon. Because from the experience of traditional software outsourcing, the gold cycle of the outsourcing industry is only a few years, as the competitive margin is easily pulled very low, only to meet the above two conditions to maintain higher margins and quickly consolidate the advantages. The investors said the two conditions were met.

China's software outsourcing industry has boomed in the past decade, known as overtaking India's "golden Decade", and the birth of the Hisoft software, Neusoft Group (600718, shares bar), the Soft International, Evans information, Zhejiang Big net new (600797, shares bar), soft power, such as a group of listed companies.

Hisoft, Neusoft, China Soft, Evans, Zhejiang Big net new, soft Qualcomm six listed companies software outsourcing business margin roughly between 30%-35%, in these companies in the development process, relying on the capital market rapidly expand their size is very important, these companies are most of the size of the breakthrough million people.

At present Prudential's gross margin in more than 40%, Wang Jiping said, Prudential's outsourced orders are the research and development outsourcing, the quality of personnel requirements are very high, so other competitors are not necessarily easy to take orders, so the company maintained a high margin.

In the software outsourcing industry, scale is critical. Wang Jiping to the company set a year size doubling requirements. "Scale up, you can get a bigger list, customers will trust you more, the company's total revenue also went up." "Wang Jiping said.

Last year, the company introduced more than 900 people and walked more than 200 people. "Wang Jiping said. Last year mobile Internet hot market once to Prudential brought a lot of trouble, the mobile developer's salary was fired too high, on the one hand recruitment is not easy, on the other hand, the staff of their own hard training often be paid by others to dig away.

One of the headhunters who dug up Prudential told reporters that Cheng Mai's people are quite popular in the market because of the training and work experience in Prudential to make it to other companies to get started quickly.

Fortunately, into the 2012, mobile internet false has been removed a lot, with Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Shanda and other large companies to reduce hiring, small and medium-sized entrepreneurial team is difficult to get financing, the entire Android development talent pay has slipped. Wang Jiping's feeling is that this year's people are better than last year's recruit.

"This year I want a net increase of 1500 employees." It is expected that 500 employees will change jobs this year, so we need to recruit 2000 new employees. "Wang Jiping said.

At present, Cheng-mai expansion of the scale is very fast, how to effective training of new employees is essential. Prudential has a large amount of money each year for the training of new employees. Every new engineer recruits, needs training 3 months, takes 25,000.

Recently Prudential is negotiating a new round of renminbi financing, coupled with the next will be submitted to the GEM listing financing applications, the company's newly raised a large amount of money will be mainly used for corporate expansion.

and prudential similar mobile phone software outsourcing companies with the Chinese Academy of Sciences background of the company won the United States Qualcomm, ARM (ARM) company, the Northern Lights and the National Science and Credit Network Venture Investment Co., Ltd. 100 million yuan investment.

"In at least 2-3 years, Prudential and the Sino-tech market is not too big a problem." "The VC investor said this is because the domestic smartphone market has just begun, following Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and other large manufacturers, a large number of small and medium-sized mobile phone manufacturers to enter the two or three-line, the market space is very large, in addition, car navigation systems, smart television and other industries Android custom development orders have just begun to release, The market space is also huge.