Steady growth
Looking at the performance of listed companies in the artificial intelligence sector that has disclosed performance announcements, the data shows that in 2017, the total operating income of 27 listed companies in the artificial intelligence sector reached 92.1 billion yuan, an increase of 26% year-on-year. In 2017, 18 companies achieved profit growth, and the average net Profit growth rate was 44.24%. Seven companies had a decline in net profit.
Artificial intelligence belongs to a branch of computer science and mainly includes robots, language recognition, image recognition, natural language processing and expert systems.
Judging from the current situation, the performance of artificial intelligence listed companies is significantly different. Among them, companies with profit growth are mainly concentrated in areas related to smart manufacturing, imagery and natural language processing, while profits are declining mainly for chip and hardware manufacturers. Data show that in the net Of the 18 companies with profit growth, 8 are mainly engaged in intelligent manufacturing. Taking soft control shares as an example, the company's 2017 net profit increased by 112.06% to 93 million yuan. The company's main business focuses on industrial intelligence, information technology equipment, rubber industry Application software research and development and innovation, and involved in robots, Internet of things and other smart areas. Cixing shares net profit of 239 million yuan, an increase of 92.39%. The company's main products for intelligent knitting machinery. In addition, Hikvision, Chuanda Da Zhisheng And the company's net profit growth, such as Eastern.com, has focused on video and image processing.
Of the 9 companies with a drop in net profit, 4 were engaged in chip R&D and design-related businesses. For reasons of declining performance, Quan Zhi Technology stated that it was mainly affected by the continuous increase in the prices of storage devices and displays, and the tablet PC market. Demand was inhibited and sales revenue decreased compared to the same period of last year. Fuyinwei provided video codec SoC and image signal processor chips. The company stated that the market competition has intensified and the gross margin of some products has declined.
Combination of 'soft' and 'hard'
Wei Wei, an associate professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, pointed out that the chip manufacturing technology has a high threshold and needs to be accumulated and invested. Chinese companies have entered the field of chip manufacturing relatively late. In many fields, the technology still needs to be improved.
In 2017, the global electronic components supply chain was tight, and overseas manufacturers took the opportunity to increase prices. Most domestic manufacturers have weak bargaining power, and profit margins are compressed.
Ren Tianhui, analyst of machinery industry of Dongxing Securities, pointed out that semiconductor demand has opened up a new cycle. Since 2016, driven by artificial intelligence, Internet of things and 5G communications, the semiconductor industry has entered a new development cycle. It is predicted that the market space will be broken in 2020. 540 billion US dollars.
Ren Tianhui believes that the Moore theorem has slowed down to bring chasing opportunities to the Chinese semiconductor industry.
Industry development is approaching the limit phase is conducive to latecomers to catch up. In the past, semiconductors can basically double their performance every two years. However, from the current situation, it takes 3 years or even longer to enter the next generation of technology nodes. Wei Wei said that artificial intelligence Advances in the development of chip-manufacturing technology. The combination of algorithm and chip 'soft-hard' facilitates the industry's accelerated development.