A Dialog with Chen Liming of iSoftStone: Extra Efforts on Intelligent Terminal Business

Driven by the thriving 5G and AI technologies, the exponential growth of big data and the maturity and application of the products like intelligent home appliance, smart wear and Internet of Vehicles, especially the formal commercialization of 5G in 2019, the industrial intelligence level has improved significantly.Some data show that the compound annual growth rate of intelligent terminal products will exceed 50 percent in the next few years.

ISoftStone is seizing this historical opportunity by its own strategic layout. ISoftStone recently established a brand of "iSoftStone Intelligent Terminal". It indicates the company will concentrate on the intelligent terminal sector and its competition of industrial chain, through technical capacity building and resource preparedness efficiently integrate and interconnect the company's core abilities of technology, business and service and its crucial strategic resources, match and guide the capacity building and business development of customers, and develop a strong drive and creativity for the sustainable competitiveness in the new arena of intelligent terminal industry in the 5G era. 

 Getting the "early-bird ticket" of intelligent terminal in 5G era

"ISoftStone has owned a good foundation of customers and technologies for intelligent terminal business", Chen Liming, Senior Vice President of iSoftStone explained the original intention of the brand of iSoftStone intelligent terminal in the interview with chinabyte, "We believe in the future the intelligent terminal will be an important racing track and direction of strategic development for our company."

Chinabyte learned that after the founding of iSoftStone intelligent terminal, iSoftStone officially formed an intelligent terminal business development committee. This committee is in charge of resource allocation, business coordination and organizational connection across different divisions, and will build up the company's competitive advantages in the core technology of intelligent terminal, chip solution, intelligent internet of vehicles, Huawei HarmonyOS ecology and digital technical service so as to compete and explore business in the new arena.

In fact, iSoftStone started to prepare for intelligent terminal business more than ten years ago. According to Chen Liming, the company was involved in this market segment around 2010, "When Google launched the Android system, iSoftStone was among the earliest companies in China to join the Android ecology, mainly engaged in the customization of Android system and the Android-based app development. We also took the lead in the customized mobile phones together with the telecommunication operators."

After a decade of accumulation, iSoftStone has been highly recognized by the major customers such as the mainstream mobile phone manufacturers, and gained a huge amount of technologies and practical experience in the process of 4G boom and 5G commercialization. "We become the owner of core technologies and the most valuable technical service provider in the field of intelligent terminals," Chen updated the interpretation of the orientation of intelligent terminal business.

As we know, the industry chain of intelligent terminal can be divided into three parts where the upstream is dominated by operating systems and chips, the midstream is equipment manufacturers and the downstream is vendors of components. ISoftStone used to focus on production and equipment manufacturers, and the new brand of intelligent terminal will shift its focus to the upstream of industry chain for closer cooperation with operating systems like Huawei HarmonyOS and domestic and foreign chip manufacturers like Hisilicon and Unisoc. "Through close cooperation with the upstream of industry chain, we can technically gain development opportunities and an advantageous position in the race of intelligent terminals, and then better serve the midstream users. We look forward to more cooperation on ecology and technology R&D, not just providing technology or service."

 Extra efforts on Huawei HarmonyOS ecology

HarmonyOS is a distributed operating system for all scenarios independently developed by Huawei. According to the latest statistics, there are over 120 million users of HarmonyOS 2, and so far 400+ application and service partners, 1,700+ hardware partners and 1.3 million+ developers are involved in HarmonyOS ecology. Given the extensive and profound cooperation between iSoftStone and Huawei, Chen Liming said in the interview that iSoftStone will always attach great importance and enlarge investment in the active development of HarmonyOS ecology with extra efforts on technology R&D, brand building, ecology cooperation, open-source contribution, etc.

Specifically, iSoftstone's team of intelligent terminal will be devoted to the design and R&D of HarmonyOS, explore the application scenarios of intelligent equipment, and develop the upper-layer application and hardware products based on HarmonyOS ecology. In addition, the technology R&D team is conducting in-depth study of HarmonyOS' core architecture to lay a solid technological foundation for customized operating systems.

"As a full-scenario operating system, HarmonyOS will be applied to more industrial scenarios. At present, iSoftStone is using the system to develop solutions for education and other sectors. I think the future direction will be the realization of industrial application scenarios of different solutions based on the industrial intelligent equipment, equipment interconnection, and the capacity building of both cloud and terminal," said Chen Liming.

Infinite potential of Internet of Vehicles

Over the past two years, the global intelligent cyber-connected automobile industry including the IoV experienced exponential growth, and the giant companies like Xiaomi, Huawei and Alibaba started to build vehicles, which is the new terminal ecology for the specific scenario. With the implementation of 5G and other technologies, the IoV and unmanned driving are unanimously considered by the industry as the future of cars.

Chen Liming told chinabyte that the IoV is also a major arena of intelligent terminal business. For strategic layout of intelligent cars, iSoftStone has three focuses: firstly the R&D of intelligent car-mounted terminals including the intelligent and digital car-mounted equipment e.g. design and development of intelligent seat and cab, development of mechanical drive; secondly the intelligent cyber-connecting service of vehicles based on IoT capacity and 5G communication capacity, e.g. the equipment-equipment, equipment-cloud and equipment-human information communication and exchange including the real-time data sharing of vehicles, interaction and processing of locations and traffic condition; thirdly the intelligent automobile and human service to provide one-stop service product of intelligent IoV, and create transparent and visualized interactive experience between end users and automakers. The company aims to provide automobile enterprises and users with all-in services covering selection, purchase, production, transportation, use, repair and replacement of cars, as well as intelligent production and digital service to automobile enterprises.

"There are quite a number of application scenarios for innovation in both B and C ends of the IoV, e.g. users may download App to check the real-time status of their cars, and control the air conditioners and lamps of cars; the automobile enterprises may collect users' habits to provide scientific and proven data for the design and production of next-generation cars." In Chen's view, iSoftStone enjoys a big range of business growth from intelligent cyber connection to intelligent mobility.

Afterword

Thanks to the farsighted strategic layout and prioritized competition focus, iSoftStone manages to be the pioneer of intelligent terminals in the 5G era. Facing a blue sea, what will iSoftStone do to build its own capacity and be the final winner? Let's wait and see.