The Unity Operating System (UOS) is the Chinese version of RedHat, and its goal is not only to catch up with Microsoft’s Windows, but to surpass it, according to Chinese analysts.
In a lengthy report released on Monday, Northeast Securities analysts An Yongping and Shao Zhuyin said that the potential market for China-made operating system is broad, and UOS developer Union Tech has the advantage to build such a flagship product.
At present, there are more than 300 Linux operating system distributions, which can be divided into commercial distributions (such as Red Hat) and community distributions (such as Debian).
The report said that open source is not equal to free. The LinuxOS industry is developing rapidly, and the potential market for China-made operating systems is vast. The report cited industry data as saying:
According to a report by Kenneth Research, the total revenue of the global Linux operating system market was US $ 2.717 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach US $ 7.074 billion by 2023.
According to CCID think tank data, in 2017, China's China-made operating system market size exceeded 700 million yuan, and the potential market space in the future is huge.
Operating systems, as basic software products, are affected by economies of scale. As revenue volume expands, marginal costs diminish, and net profit margins for operating system manufacturers have the potential to further increase, the report said.
The analysts believe that Union Tech has these core advantages:
1. The integration of China-made operating systems is the general trend. Union Tech has the first-mover advantage.
In China's operating system industry, China-made products not only have a small share, but also have multiple China-made operating systems fighting each other, which cannot form a joint force. Therefore, the development of a unified China-made operating system is the general trend.
On the one hand, it is beneficial for software and hardware manufacturers to focus on R & D resources to develop the ecology, on the other hand, it is conducive to user growth and accumulation, and to nurture the operating system ecology.
Union Tech was established in November 2019 and is composed of a number of core companies in China that have long been engaged in operating system research and development. It is the first to launch a self-developed UOS product based on the Linux kernel, a unified operating system, suitable for daily office and home use, and has certain first-mover advantages.
2. Cooperation with Huawei and benefit from the development of Huawei Kunpeng's industrial chain.
Affected by Microsoft's supply cut, in 2019 Huawei (including Honor) shipped a large number of laptop products pre-installed with Deepin's third-party Linux operating system (exclusively supplied by Deepin Tech).
Compared with the pre-installed Windows operating system version, the price of the same model of notebook computer with Deepin operating system pre-installed is about 300 yuan cheaper, which has a price advantage. We believe that even if Microsoft resumes the supply of Huawei, Deepin operating system still has room for replacement.
We estimate that the annual shipments of Huawei notebooks in 2018 will be about 6 million units. Although there is pressure on Huawei's growth rate due to chip outages in 2019, the pre-installation of the Deepin operating system in Huawei notebooks will bring greater growth Amount of space.
As Huawei's own chips gradually enter the supply chain in 20 years, we believe that Huawei's notebook and PC products will have a record high shipment and market share, while the pre-installed Deepin third-party Linux operating system version will account for a higher proportion.
In addition, Union Tech and Huawei create the Kunpeng industrial ecosystem, such as the release of three operating system products for the Huawei Kunpeng platform, co-construction of the openEuler open source community, and joint participation in various Kunpeng ecological alliances. Kunpeng's priority partners will fully benefit.
3. The community operation ability is excellent, and the developer gene guarantees the company's continuous innovation ability.
The open source community and operating system ecology are the core values of Union Tech. As of December 14, 2019, the number of registered members in the Deepin community reached 91,600, ranking third in the global mainstream open source operating system community.
Union Tech is actively building an operating system ecosystem, and has launched a full range of compatibility and adaptation work with mainstream domestic machine manufacturers and hundreds of software manufacturers.
The company's founder and actual controller Liu Wenhuan relies on ideals and hobbies to lead the team to adhere to the research and development of China-made operating system in a long-term continuous unprofitable environment. The developer gene is one of the company's core advantages and ensures the company's continuous innovation. ability.
4. Union Tech employs over 700 people. It is the largest operating system R&D team in China and has the advantage of technical R&D talents.
Wuhan Deepin Tech originally had more than 100 employees, most of whom were technical R&D personnel; Wuhan ArcherMind had a total of about 600 employees, with technical personnel accounting for more than 80%. After the establishment of Union Tech, the total number of employees exceeded 700.
In addition, as of the end of 2018, the total number of employees of the parent company ArcherMind Technology reached 2,807, of which 2,546 were technical personnel, accounting for 90.70%. We believe that Union Tech has certain advantages in terms of the number of personnel and the size of the R & D team, which will help promote the company's products.
Based on these, the analysts believe that Union Tech's future positioning is not only to replace Windows, but also to transcend. They went on in the report:
At the 9th Deepin Developer and User Conference on November 23, 2019, Liu Wenhuan said that in addition to the development of intelligent collaboration and cloud services, the next-generation operating system hopes to achieve true deepin, that is, an independent maintenance system Core packages, providing comprehensive community collaborative development and testing capabilities, long-term maintenance of the kernel and toolchain, etc.
We believe that the company's goal is not only to catch up with the Windows operating system, but also to surpass it.
