The UK's decision to leave the European Union and the recent
uncertainties as a result of the emergence of Donald Trump as President-Elect
of the USA, has led to predictions of doom for the western tech industry.
TechRadar reported how the move could cripple the sector by removing EU talent
and funding, cut off access to data and markets, and complicate trading and
data privacy laws for years.
American tech industry investors might see fit to cheer the
weakening of international competition, but in truth they have little reason to
celebrate: the effects of Brexit on the US tech industry strike a harsh
financial blow, and could have long-term ramifications on US businesses, from
tech giants to fledgling startups. This is in addition to the expected backlash
from the global market on the emergence of Trump.
Recently, technology companies in China have leapt forward
in Usain Bolt-like strides in recent years, as they've evolved from remarkable
copiers to legitimate innovators.
If you still think Chinese tech companies are
only about replicating the innovations that others have made, then you've got
some catching up to do. Today's Chinese tech sector is filled with a number of
disruptive companies that are not only competing but leaping ahead in the race
to build better products and use tech to solve important problems.
The following companies are doing big things and are likely
to be important players in the tech industry's next stage.
1. Baidu
Often called "the Google of China," Baidu is best
known as the Chinese mainland's most popular search engine, which makes it an
online advertising colossus. However, the company also does maps, news, cloud
storage, internet TV, and a ton of different search products. Beyond core internet
services, it has also branched out into e-payments with Baidu Wallet and food
delivery services in over 70 Chinese cities with Waimai. Like Google, the long
term future of the company may be in artificial intelligence. The company is
also working on a self-driving car in its Silicon Valley lab that's ramping up
to over 100 engineers by the end of 2016.
2. Alibaba
The Chinese tech giant that's perhaps best known across the
English-speaking world is Alibaba, the world's largest e-commerce company. Yahoo
famously owns a 15% stake that's valued at over $30 billion--far more than
Yahoo's core business is now worth. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang bought the
stake for $1 billion in 2005, in exchange for a 40% ownership of Alibaba at the
time. In a sign of how radically their fortunes have changed, Alibaba has
considered acquiring Yahoo in recent years. Today, Alibaba is an e-commerce
juggernaut. Although China is a distant second to the US in GDP, China is the
world's largest e-commerce market because it doesn't have a retail
infrastructure to match the US or Europe, and Alibaba has built B2C, C2C, and
B2B platforms to serve it. It's best-known for Taobao, its eBay-like C2C
platform, but it also has B2C platform Tmall, online payment service Alipay,
and B2B cloud computing platform Aliyun.
3. Tencent
Sometimes referred to as the "Facebook of China,"
Tencent was long known for its instant messaging client QQ.com, with over 200
million users. However, Tencent's successor to QQ, WeChat, has become the
world's second largest social network behind Facebook and it is growing like
crazy. WeChat has exploded from its launch in late 2010 to over 200 million
users by 2013 and now 700 million users in 2016. Think of WeChat as a
combination of WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Google News, and Slack. It does
it all. At a time when social networks are splitting out specific functions
into different apps, WeChat is taking the Swiss Army Knife approach, and it's
working. Whenever I met people in Beijing and they wanted to follow up, they
always asked if I was on WeChat. It's the place where people spend more digital
time than anywhere else. Almost all the other tech vendors I spoke with talked
about their partnerships with WeChat--whether it was its news feed, its photo
sharing, or its payment service. You can now download it and use it in multiple
languages and it's starting to make inroads in India and is available in the
US.
4. JD.com
You can think of JD.com as "the Amazon of China,"
but it's actually racing ahead of Amazon in several areas. A decade ago, JD
made a bet that a lot of Chinese shoppers would evolve from being
price-motivated to wanting to buy based on quality and brand authenticity once
consumers in China had more disposable income, and that's exactly what's
happened. China is flooded with knock-off products, but JD carries only
authentic goods from the world's most iconic brands. At the same time, it
realized 70% of its complaints from customers were about shipping, so it built
its own shipping service--which infuriated investors. Today, it offers same-day
delivery to 600 million customers in China and next-day delivery to virtually
the entire country. It's also working on drone delivery to remote rural areas.
They use big data to keep inventories low, maximize delivery, and create
sophisticated data models to run its own financing for customers.
5. Didi
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Like its US rival Uber, Didi has been a rocketship for the
past several years. Didi Chuxing, as it's officially known, has created the
Chinese mainland's most popular ride hailing service, serving over 10 million
rides per day (compared to 2 million that Uber does daily worldwide). Founded
in 2012, Didi now has over 5,000 employees and is valued at over $16
billion--and it famously got a $1 billion investment from Apple earlier this
month. Didi has gone far beyond just being a taxi app. They work directly with
existing taxi drivers in addition to independent operators. They set up
carpooling and ridesharing with Didi Bus. They work closely with corporate clients
to book and manage business rides. They have a service that will pick up both
you and your car and drive you home if you've been drinking. They have a test
driving service that let's you try out a car before you buy it (or loan out
your car for a fee). Traffic is one of the biggest problems in China and Didi
sees itself using machine learning and big data to solve it. The company said
its services are moving more cars off the street, creating 4 million new work
opportunities per month, and saving 13.3 million tons of carbon emissions
through carpooling alone. While Didi has 87% market share in China, it's only
reached 1.5% of the population, so its growth potential is massive.
6. Huawei
Once considered the "Cisco of China" because of
its role as a hardware provider to telecommunications companies in Asia, Huawei
has branched out in recent years and become one of the world's leading mobile
device makers. As Chris Duckett recently wrote, Huawei's smartphone market
share is on the rise in a number of markets outside of China. But, the company
is also seeing its boats rise in other waters as well. It's working on a
narrowband IoT deployment in Australia, it's building a 1.0 Gbps 5G network
that will be deployed in 2017 in Singapore, it's partnering with Google to
bring Daydream VR to Android, and its new Honor 5X (budget brand) smartphone is
getting solid reviews. In a world where everyone wants to be a software and
services provider, Huawei has emerged has a pre-eminent hardware maker--in both
the B2B and consumer markets.
7. Xiaomi
Speaking of hardware makers, Huawei's biggest competition in
the consumer device market isn't just from Apple and Samsung but from its
upstart Chinese neighbor, Xiaomi. The privately held startup launched in 2010
as an alternative Android OS maker, but it soon decided to make its own phones
and hired away Google's Android chief Hugo Barra to help. Since then, the
company has developed a rabid fan base for its "Mi" brand of
smartphones by fostering a huge community of 170 million worldwide users and 10
million beta testers. That's helped make Xiaomi devices the phone of choice
among the most active smartphone users in China. While the Mi smartphones
themselves still draw a lot of their design cues from Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi
has been more innovative in other areas. The company is becoming a much broader
consumer product brand--almost a mix of Braun and Apple. Its latest products
include flat screen televisions, hi-fi headphones and earbuds, an Android TV
set top box, a fitness tracker, a hoverboard, a water quality measurement pen,
and a WiFi-enabled rice maker.
Also keep an eye
on...
Other companies to watch include Cheetah Mobile, which is
branching out from being an Android app maker into artificial intelligence and
robots with the launch of Cheetah Robotics, and LeEco, which wants to take a
run at Tesla in the race to create the first mass market electric car.
Incumbents
While there are a number of other Chinese tech companies
that have made a strong name for themselves, including Lenovo, ZTE, and
Sina--and they remain important to keep on your radar--they aren't quite as
innovative and disruptive as the big seven mentioned above.
Startups
China is also starting to percolate lots of new startups.
Many engineers, innovators, and leaders who have left China to study in the US,
are now returning to China to launch their own companies instead of going to
work for US tech giants. Some of that is due to the large pool of VC money,
some of it is due to the huge numbers of engineers available, and some it is
simply due to the broader tech ecosystem that's developing in China, especially
in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. You can technically still think of Didi and
Xiaomi as startups. But there are also impressive new companies just starting
to breakthrough, such as Deep Glint (big data-powered security cameras) and
Hover Camera (personal photography drones).
…Contributions – zdnet TechRadar
