Author | Wang Jingya/Wen Shuzhijuan/Editor
"In the past, Xiaomi has been learning, growing and accumulating. Today, Xiaomi has ushered in a leap moment." On October 26th, Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, announced that Xiaomi Group’s strategy has been officially upgraded to "the whole ecology of people, cars and homes", which integrates personal equipment, smart home and smart travel into an organic whole with people as the center. The key to carrying Xiaomi’s new strategy is Xiaomi’s OS.
With the development of Internet of Things, big data and artificial intelligence technology, the Internet of Everything has become a trend. In the future, mobile phones, smart homes, smart cars, and even robots will break the boundaries and cooperate across devices, but the scene will become more complicated. Operating system plays a particularly critical role in the cross-terminal connection of devices, and its innovation is as important as chips, semiconductors, and advanced processes.
Crucially, the appearance of Xiaomi’s surging OS is not only a turning point for Xiaomi to take the lead in realizing the layout of "people, cars and homes are all ecological", but also a microcosm of China science and technology companies’ continuous breakthrough, continuous innovation, improvement of international competitiveness and efforts to win the crown jewel of science and technology. From Huawei’s Harmony OS to Xiaomi’s surging OS, from BYD’s blade battery and Yunqi chassis technology to Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited Shenxing’s rechargeable battery "getting on the bus", China’s science and technology enterprises have moved from following to leading, and gradually grown into global enterprises with "advanced strength".
Xiaomi 澎 OS is online.China technology moves from following to leading.
78 years ago, the appearance of Von Neumann architecture determined that binary logic, program storage and execution, and computer were composed of five parts, so that hardware design and program design could be executed separately. On this basis, the operating system manages the software and hardware resources.
In the field of mobile devices, due to the change of operating system, different ecosystems have been derived and different moderns have been shaped. In the era when Symbin system dominated the rivers and lakes, Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and other enterprises blossomed and occupied a large market share. However, there are always innovators who are constantly pushing the times forward. In 2007, Google named an operating system based on Linux kernel Android. In the same year, Apple announced an operating system at Macworld conference and renamed it ios in 2010.
When the mobile terminal represented by the mobile phone entered the intelligent age, the former king gradually faded out of the stage. In 2013, Nokia announced that it would no longer release Symbian mobile phones. Since then, the emerging Android and ios have been competing for many years, and the market has also been divided into Apple’s whole family barrel and Android camp.
Based on the operating system, technology companies represented by Apple quickly established an ecological moat to seize the market on a global scale. However, in the past years, the mobile terminal field only lacked the presence of competitive China enterprises. In fact, in the past, China enterprises were in a state of following for a long time, and all kinds of knockoffs that ran rampant in the market once became synonymous with China’s science and technology industry.
Although China science and technology enterprises are accelerating to catch up, it will not happen overnight from catching up to surpassing. Especially in the bottom innovation level such as operating system, from the point of view of importance, it is the key for China science and technology enterprises to get rid of the "bottleneck" of supply chain, and it is also an important link to establish their own ecology and lead scientific and technological innovation. Its research and development is as difficult and important as chips and advanced processes that are well known by all walks of life. From the perspective of investment scale, the huge R&D expenses, long R&D cycle and unpredictable complex risks are the real challenges faced by China science and technology enterprises.
When Lei Jun introduced Xiaomi 澎湃 OS, he said: "The positioning of Xiaomi 澎湃 OS is people-centered, and it is to create an ecological operating system for people, cars and homes. This goal is extremely ambitious. After 13 years of exploration, Xiaomi has been researched and developed for 7 years. At the beginning, Xiaomi soldiers were divided into four ways, involving mobile phone operating system, embedded operating system, self-developed operating system and car system. Two years ago, Xiaomi made up his mind to integrate and unify the software architecture and the bottom of the system. This time, the reconstruction of the bottom of the system, Xiaomi Group participated in more than 5,000 engineers. "
At present, in the field of operating systems, Huawei HarmonyOS, which took seven years and more than 4,000 R&D personnel to develop, followed by Xiaomi’s surging OS. With the support of Huawei and Xiaomi, China’s science and technology industry has entered a new stage of development. Based on the huge user ecology, China science and technology enterprises have achieved a key turning point from following to leading in the international market.
"The operating system is the cornerstone of the development of the ICT industry. If the software is a variety of passengers and the hardware is an airplane, then it is the operating system that uses the underlying resources to play a scheduling role in the middle. It is the terminal building connecting hardware and software. " Wu Chao, director of CITIC Construction Investment Research Institute and chief analyst of TMT industry, said metaphorically.
In Wu Chao’s view, the most important thing about Xiaomi 澎湃 OS is that it rewrites the entire underlying system architecture. In addition to continuing the original Linux and Vela kernels, AI-related modules are added to ensure the stability and reliability of the operating system.
People-centeredTake the lead in realizing the layout of "people, cars and homes are all ecological"
In 2016, Alpha Go, a robot developed by Google, caused a sensation all over the world by beating the world champion of Go 4:1 in a Go match. Recently, driven by technologies such as 5G and big data, the artificial intelligence industry has entered a period of rapid development. In particular, the emergence of a large model represented by Chat GPT has made people realize that AI has moved from basics to intelligence.
With the rise of the Internet of Things and smart cars, more and more devices will realize cross-terminal circulation and collaboration, and the generation of a large amount of data combined with large models is expected to make AI smarter. However, it is not easy to achieve smooth flow and combination between different types of equipment. It involves chips, sensors, communication technology, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, application ecological construction and other latitudes. In order to achieve this goal, different scientific and technological enterprises have increased their investment and stepped out of their own development paths.
Previously, Huawei put forward the "1+8+n" strategy, and based on HarmonyOS’s ecology, it realized cross-device circulation and formed a super terminal. Xiaomi is constantly laying out around the IoT field. In 2014, Xiaomi began to enter the IoT field; In 2017, Xiaomi released the self-developed Xiaomi Vela OS to gradually unify the loT equipment system; In 2023, Xiaomi 澎湃 OS realized the all-device cross-end convergence architecture, and the whole scene of mobile phone, car and AIoT will be unified in architecture and communication.
Although the strategic names are different, the core behind Huawei’s and Xiaomi’s strategies is to make AI serve people and take people as the center, so that AI can understand people’s thoughts more and more, and provide people with more personalized and accurate services in different scenarios.
At present, facing the new round of opportunities brought by the big model, China science and technology enterprises have increased their prices. Among them, Huawei and Baidu accelerate the layout from the chip layer, architecture layer and application layer, while Xiaomi deeply integrates the self-developed AI model with Xiaomi 澎湃 OS, realizing the whole ecology of people, cars and homes, and establishing an interconnection experience of self-perception and self-decision.
In fact, Xiaomi’s opening up of the ecology of people and cars is not unrelated to the development of the automobile industry. New energy vehicles are an important way for China to overtake in the automobile industry. In recent years, China enterprises including BYD and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited have continuously increased their investment in technology research and development, which has promoted China’s new energy industry chain, new energy vehicle technology and battery technology to occupy a leading position in the international market.
Intelligentization is the competition focus of new energy automobile industry in the future. In the past period of time, China enterprises including Huawei, Geely and Weilai have been exploring the interconnection technology between cars and mobile phones, and even more devices. Xiaomi is using Xiaomi 澎湃 OS to achieve this idea and let the smart experience land in the scene of the car.
In the future, when users are sitting in the car, if they encounter beautiful scenery, they can call the car camera to take pictures and share the photos with friends through their mobile phones. At the same time, with the blessing of the big model, the device will independently understand the user’s preferences and living habits, such as leaving for work at eight o’clock every morning, and the system will automatically generate corresponding commuting suggestions.
"In recent years, the development of mobile Internet has been very rapid. On the one hand, the system driven by China enterprises meets the market demand, on the other hand, it also accelerates the innovation speed of the entire technology industry in the process of accelerating technology iteration." Guan Qingyou, vice president of China Private Economy Research Association, said that Xiaomi has built an ecosystem of people and cars, and this system is our advantage.
Continue to overweight innovationChina science and technology enterprises are going international.
The appearance of Xiaomi’s surging OS is not accidental, and this scene can only appear in the China market.
In the past ten years, China has gradually developed into the largest producer and marketer of consumer electronics, and domestic mobile phone brands account for over 60% of the global market. At the same time, China is also the largest smart home market in the world; In the automotive field, China’s new energy vehicle production and sales ranked first in the world for 8 consecutive years; In the field of AI, China’s artificial intelligence technology is also showing the trend of competing with foreign markets.
Xiaomi has complied with the development cycle of science and technology in the future, and developed an operating system which was initiated by China science and technology enterprises and linked with the intelligence of all things.
In fact, Xiaomi’s surging OS is only the tip of China technology company’s continuous innovation and improvement of international competitiveness. To become an "advanced and powerful" global technology enterprise is not aimed at upgrading a single technology, but more at a comprehensive breakthrough. Xiaomi 14 series, which was unveiled with Xiaomi 澎湃 OS, is equipped with a variety of "black technologies" such as congruent deep micro-curved screen, Xiaomi Longjing glass, and endless iris, which makes Xiaomi grow from benchmarking apple to surpassing apple and leads the industry to realize the key leap of mobile optics.
At present, the pace of innovation of science and technology enterprises in China is far from stopping. Lei Jun once said that Xiaomi’s goal after entering the new decade is to invest in the underlying core technologies on a large scale. Xiaomi will choose areas with long-term value for human civilization, and achieve deep integration of software and hardware and comprehensive empowerment of AI. In the next five years, Xiaomi will invest at least 100 billion RMB as research and development funds.
It can’t be ignored that the innovation of China science and technology enterprises not only drives the development of the enterprises themselves, but also the upgrading of the whole industrial chain. For example, Xiaomi’s intelligent manufacturing system is constantly being exported to the whole manufacturing industry. Some supply chain cooperative enterprises, including Lansi Technology and Longqi Technology, have enabled a complete set of production line equipment and smart factory systems exported by Xiaomi. Driven by Huawei, Xiaomi, BYD and other enterprises, Huawei’s industrial chain, Xiaomi’s industrial chain and automobile industrial chain have gradually grown into international models.
The overall upgrading of the industrial chain has accelerated the process of China’s scientific and technological enterprises going abroad, and more and more China’s scientific and technological enterprises have begun to go abroad and compete with overseas head enterprises in the international market. Take Xiaomi as an example, its business has entered more than 100 countries and regions. As of the second quarter of 2023, Xiaomi smartphones ranked in the top three in 51 markets around the world and ranked in the top five in 61 markets; In June 2023, the monthly users of MIUI operating system reached 606 million, of which more than 455 million were overseas users.
"The speed of scientific and technological progress in China in recent years can be described by leaps and bounds. Not only has significant progress been made in core technologies such as chips, but science and technology have also driven the accelerated upgrading of high-end manufacturing. This is due to the huge market in China and the efforts of China enterprises, as well as international competition. " Guan Qingyou believes that strengthening self-research and realizing autonomous and controllable technology by head enterprises is not only a way for China to cope with the "bottleneck" of technology, but also an inevitable option after technology development enters no man’s land. China has entered an explosive period of scientific and technological progress. In the future, more and more technologies will be in the leading position in the world, which will promote the upgrading and transformation of the industrial chain and enhance global competitiveness.
