Editor/Zhao
"Huawei is very fierce"
Hikvision and Dahua have long been the leading companies in the security industry, among which Hikvision, which has the largest market share in the world and is known as "Little Huawei", has a market value of nearly 500 billion yuan, ranking 15 in the A-share total market value ranking, second only to the manufacturing company Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and Midea Group.
But now with the entry of Huawei, the pattern of the security market is being quietly broken.
"Huawei has made great progress in the security market and won several provincial-level safe cities." Zhao Ling, the southern regional sales manager of Dahua Company, a listed company in the security industry, told Ai Finance, "In fact, we are also pushing, but we were badly beaten." Zhao Ling, who works in this old enterprise, feels very helpless.
An Peng, an employee of Du Jia Technology, another domestic head security company, bluntly said that Huawei entered the security market in the past two years and was very strong as soon as it came in. "Huawei only integrates large projects, such as hundreds of millions of orders. It takes orders very quickly, and when the tender meets them, we basically can't compare it. " Du Jia Science and Technology is one of the top 50 enterprises in the global security field, mainly engaged in software. At the same time, the company also does some integration projects in Guangdong. The employee said that Du Jia and Huawei are both competitors and partners.
The securities market is worth trillions. In the past few years, with the construction of representative projects such as "Safe City" and "Eye-catching Project", public safety systems such as video surveillance and alarm dispatching have been applied in cities and villages, and there are more than 22,000 security companies, among which China enterprises led by Hikvision and Dahua occupy about 10 seats in the top 50 international companies. In recent years, safety has gone far beyond the scope of public safety. Video surveillance technology and artificial intelligence technology used in security industry, such as face recognition, have been widely used in the digitalization of cities and enterprises, and the era of pan-security has arrived.
"Huawei's attack on the security market is huge." Many security people lamented AI Finance. Huawei has also maintained a consistent style. Once the strategy is determined, it will hold high and fight high, and it will also set ultra-high performance targets internally.
The Guangzhou World Security Expo held at the end of July this year was originally a small industry exhibition, but among hundreds of exhibitors, Huawei has the largest booth area, reaching 720 square meters. Only Huawei's partners and customers can enter half the exhibition area. Nevertheless, Huawei booth is still one of the most popular booths in these two days.
The industry people who visited the exhibition area described to AI Finance and Economics that the business scenes exhibited by Huawei were all made by partners, and they were using ecological gameplay for security. Furthermore, "Huawei cuts into security from the perspective of the cloud. Only provide bases, clouds, platforms and servers, and do not do specific business. "
Li Ke, a senior industry person, further observed, "Huawei is mainly positioned in the high-end market, targeting those head customers, such as government-related and large enterprises, and there is no obvious action for the more fragmented market in the security field."
Why did Huawei choose to enter the security market at this time? The reason is probably that in the last two years, security is no longer a simple security, but has been integrated into the digital market of the government and enterprises. The government-enterprise market is one of the most important areas for Huawei. As a result, Huawei won the government and enterprise market through digital government and cloud computing, and quickly attacked the city in the security field.
According to media reports, in the first half of 2020, Huawei Cloud won 22 out of 58 public bidding projects in the cloud computing market, of which 12 projects announced the amount, and the sum of Huawei's winning bids reached 654.38054 billion yuan. Some insiders told Ai Finance that there are usually more bidding projects in the second half of the year, and Huawei will win more big projects.
At the beginning of August this year, a report released by Omdia, a research organization, showed that Hikvision, Dahua, Axis and Huawei ranked in the top four in the global market share ranking of intelligent video surveillance and infrastructure in 2020. In addition to Axis from Sweden, Hikvision and Dahua are both giants in the domestic video surveillance field, and Huawei ranks in such a high ranking for the first time.
Strategic repetition
Huawei's security is not a whim, it has a historical origin.
The most famous is the video surveillance chip "Little Black" made by Huawei. Founded in 2004, Xiaoheisi is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Huawei and the product of Ren's determination to make efforts in the chip industry. At that time, the main participant in the security chip market was the American manufacturer Texas Instruments. However, Hayes found that the chip cost performance of Texas Instruments was not high, and the support for customers was not grounded. For example, customers need to pay a license fee of 500,000 yuan to get the development package. Only a few big manufacturers such as Hikvision and Dahua can afford it in China.
Aiming at the weakness of Texas Instruments, Huawei Blackstone provided a cost-effective chip with fast service response and no licensing fee, which was very popular in small companies. Little Hayes quickly attacked the city and plundered the land, robbing foreign opponents of food. "After small companies use it, big companies have no competitive advantage without it." Zhuo Yi, a former employee of Xiaoheisi, recalls AI Finance.
In 2007, Xiaoheisi won the contract of 200,000 chips from Dahua, which was its first real big contract to export chips. On 20 10, Xiaoheisi finally got Hikvision, the world's largest security camera manufacturer. Later, in the field of surveillance camera chips, Huawei Xiaoheisi once occupied more than 70% of the national market share.
Zhuo Yi recalled that Hikvision later wanted to make its own chips, but this would have a huge impact on Huawei. Little Hayes quickly communicated, and they gave Hikvision an explanation. "The conclusion is that developing chips by yourself is not as cheap and mature as using Little Hayes directly." I don't know what Hikvision will think if the offer is resumed now.
In 2020, there was a shortage of high-end chips supplied by Huawei Blackstone. "Huawei has inventory, but it will decide whether to supply high-end chips according to the importance of customers." Wu Hang, a person engaged in smart cities, said, "Huawei's supply of low-end chips is still sufficient."
Apart from the layout of Blackstone on the chip, Huawei's actions in the security field are not obvious, but there have been several attempts in the past decade. Once, in 2006, Huawei assisted the operator in the "Global Eye" project. At that time, Huawei was doing monitoring software and chose other security equipment vendors to OEM cameras and other terminal products. To some extent, Huawei's orders have also contributed to the rise of a large number of security companies in Shenzhen.
The other time was six years later. In 20 12, Huawei applied to be the director of China Security Products Industry Association, and officially announced its entry into the security field at a security Expo at the end of the same year, releasing security products and solutions.
This statement makes traditional security companies very nervous. Because of the existence of Hayes, Huawei's positioning in the security field is more like the role of chip supplier. Suppliers have become competitors, which makes Hikvision, Dahua and other companies have to be vigilant. But the fact is that in the next few years, Huawei still has no obvious action on terminal products, and Xiaoheisi will supply chips to security companies as usual. Some insiders have analyzed that perhaps the security market is excessively dispersed, and Huawei is not interested in such a market. This peaceful situation lasted until 20 19.
At the 20 19 Shenzhen Expo, Huawei launched three heavyweight video surveillance products and the first video algorithm mall-Huawei HoloSens Store. Duan, who was just appointed as the president of Huawei Security at that time, delivered a passionate speech, saying that he would "adjust the pace of the whole industry".
Huawei seems to be serious this time. In May 2020, Duan, then president of Huawei Machine Vision, shouted Huawei's security goal: "In the security field, Huawei must achieve the first three or five-year goal this year." He also said that Huawei's style of play is completely different from that of traditional security vendors, and its development strategy is "platform+ecology". In addition to shouting slogans, Huawei has also made a series of organizational restructuring to support the development of security business.
In the past two years, Huawei has attacked the city in the security market. Some industry veterans have concluded to AI Finance that whether Huawei can win big orders mainly depends on three aspects: government relations, domestic brands and eco-play. Together, these factors give Huawei an incomparable advantage over other competitors.
"Huawei's rapid entry into the security field is inseparable from its relationship with government and enterprises." Many insiders expressed this view to Ai Finance. "Security is an industry that values the relationship between customers and customers." Iflytek, a business line of government and enterprises said.
"Huawei has access to provincial government relations, and we don't have this level of access." Dahua's salesperson said. After Huawei comes into contact with projects in the province, it will be much smoother at the city and district levels.
National brand is also one of Huawei's advantages. From chips, middleware to servers, Huawei's own brand is one of the core reasons for winning many government and enterprise projects. Eco-gameplay is a word that Huawei has often mentioned in the past two years. Security covers a series of requirements such as hardware terminals, business platforms, specific applications, solutions and data security. Huawei didn't do all the work, but made a top-level design and handed it over to its partners.
Hikvision and Dahua's helplessness
Huawei's intervention has also changed the current security market. "Now we are in a rather awkward position." Liu Wei, a senior employee of Dahua, told AI Finance and Economics.
Under the background of digital transformation, the security industry is also being redefined. Liu Yu observed that other Internet cloud vendors such as Ali and Tencent, as well as state-owned integrators such as China, all entered the security field in the same mode as Huawei. Their similarity is that they have a top-level design, can provide a base and are good at making a big platform.
Liu Yu said that Hikvision and Dahua have also seen the demand for informatization in various places, but their front-line employees have nowhere to start. It is not difficult to understand that traditional video surveillance companies are all products, and their understanding of informationization and their ability to make a big platform are difficult to compete with Huawei or cloud vendors.
Liu Yu told Ai Finance that the advantage of Haikang and Dahua is that they have established a complete distribution channel and system. Take a head enterprise as an example, it has more than 200 offices in China, equivalent to 8 in each province, which means that its sales service network basically covers first-tier to third-tier cities. Comparatively speaking, Huawei has only 32 representative offices in China, while Ali has 16 sub-regions, and Tencent has a finer granularity.
"But customers contacted by enterprises like ours are not closely related to government departments, mainly small security orders." Liu Yu revealed that the company's orders are fragmented, and transportation, education and architecture are the main scenes. The actual order amount is usually small. For example, an underground garage in a residential area is a single one, and the average level of 200,000 is the most common. He said that they will also undertake tens of millions of large-scale projects, which play an aggregate role, but the number is limited due to capacity problems. For example, in the field of transportation, there are only about five or six such projects every year, and no matter how many, they can't be taken down.
Liu Yu said that in the past two years, the company began to adopt the idea of ecological cooperation and reached cooperative partnerships with Ali, Tencent and China. "Ali, they are also willing to cooperate with us and contact customers through our office." In practice, it is not smooth. The main reason is that salespeople don't understand informationization and the cloud.
For example, in recent years, cultural relics and ancient buildings have become a hot field of informatization, so salespeople should have such sensitivity, such as actively establishing contact with the librarian, which may bring business needs in the future. Liu Yu said, but the sales staff of the company can't remember. They will only focus on traditional security needs. "There is no such idea."
In addition to establishing cooperative relations with large manufacturers, the head enterprises represented by Huawei are constantly expanding their business boundaries. For example, in addition to the security market, the company is also laying out the fire protection market. "The fire market is very big. In the context of carbon neutrality, it is involved from refined electricity management to safety. "
Hikvision is also in dynamic adjustment.
As a leader in the industry, Conway realized the changes in the security industry two years ago. At that time, the company began to downplay the concept of safety. Hu Yangzhong, president of Hikvision, once pointed out that Hikvision experienced video perception, intelligent IOT, and then the integration of things and information. It has developed into a big data company.
To this end, Hikvision has developed a series of innovative services, including the Internet of Things cloud platform, machine vision, thermal imaging sensing, storage devices, intelligent fire protection and medical care. Among them, Fluorite Network, an Internet of Things cloud platform, announced in August this year that it plans to split 60% of its shares and list them in science and technology innovation board.
"The cloud platform is a very big business. The listing of fluorite network is conducive to improving the valuation of Hikvision and providing more funds for the development of this business. " An industry observer said. However, he also said that there is still a certain gap between Hikang's ability to do software services and Internet cloud vendors.
However, Huawei does not have an absolute advantage in the security field. Industry insiders told AI Finance that Huawei's products have high prices and limited models. The gap between Huawei and Hikvision and Dahua is the difference between dozens of models and thousands of models. An industry insider even said that Huawei's products are mainly used as brand image, which is more convenient for bidding. In fact, Huawei's mid-range and terminal devices still rely mainly on partners.
Huawei is also slow to respond to the market. Dahua employees said that it takes half a year for Dahua to develop a new device and two years for Huawei.
Therefore, we can see that Hikvision and Dahua, the top two companies in the industry, have a high market value despite the impact of Huawei on large projects. Hikvision, for example, has maintained a market value of nearly 500 billion, and they still maintain a steady growth momentum. 20021semi-annual report shows that during the reporting period, Hikvision's revenue was 33.902 billion yuan, up 39.68% year-on-year; The net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 6,486,543.8 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40. 17%. In the same period, Dahua Company's revenue was 65.438+03.505 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.27%, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 65.438+06.43 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.03%.
The recent information about state-owned cloud also makes cloud vendors at the center of the competition stage indecisive. Some areas will migrate information systems deployed in third-party public cloud platforms to state-owned clouds.
People in the security industry also said that there are some uncertainties in large-scale government projects. In the future, there will still be a subtle relationship between cloud vendors represented by Huawei and traditional security companies represented by Hikvision and Huawei. Under the difference of advantages, they have both cooperation and competition, but in the long run, it is uncertain who will lead.