From the underlying product technology to platform services, to solutions for different industries, the competition between giants has been in full swing.
Suning and Meituan have successively announced their withdrawal from the cloud computing business. Although it does not have much impact on China’s cloud computing market, it once again reveals the fact that cloud computing has developed to this day, and the speed of reshuffle is accelerating. Or the late entrants have been unable to launch an impact on the giant territory.
At the same time, after more than ten years of development, the main battlefield of cloud computing has also undergone a strategic shift, extending from the cloud infrastructure to the application layer, from the consumer market dominated by internet giants to the competition at the enterprise level and the government side.
Only from the technical point of view, it is impossible to interpret the meaning and value of cloud computing.
The price war squeezes the living space of small and medium-sized manufacturers
Marked by Ali’s establishment of the first “e-commerce cloud computing center” in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province in January 2009, my country’s cloud computing market quickly showed a state of blossoming, and a series of cloud computing manufacturers rushed to enter, and also brought live servers, storage, and operations. The entire information industry chain such as systems and middleware.
However, nowadays it is more and more difficult for small players or new entrants to get a share of the cloud computing market, and the traditional Ali model is no longer difficult to replicate.
According to the “China Public Cloud Service Market Report in the Fourth Quarter of 2019” released by the British research agency Canalys, the size of China’s cloud computing market has reached 3.3 billion US dollars in the fourth quarter and will continue to maintain rapid growth; Alibaba has a market share of 46.4%. Ranked first, Tencent ranked second with 18%, and Baidu surpassed Amazon Cloud Services (AWS) to take third place.
Although compared with the world’s leading countries, there is still room for improvement in the penetration rate of cloud computing services in my country, but the market for small and medium cloud computing manufacturers has rapidly narrowed. In 2014, Amazon Cloud Services launched a price war in the United States, and price cuts have since become the most effective way to reshuffle the public cloud market. The price competition in the Chinese market is particularly fierce. In 2016 alone, Alibaba Cloud has cut prices 17 times. For a time, new entrants are also rushing to show their goodwill to users with low prices as their greatest sincerity. Until last year, the discounts of manufacturers were still one by one, financial health gave way to market enclosures, and price reductions completely pushed small and medium cloud computing manufacturers to the brink of life and death.
At the beginning of the year, Ucloud, an independent manufacturer officially listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, directly stated in its prospectus that the price reduction of cloud computing products has become a normal trend in the industry. Maintained, the issuer has the risk of continued decline in future gross profit margins or even losses.
Luo Haoyuan, founder of Zhongyue Joint Investment, said that heavy assets, high investment, and strong ecology are the industry barriers for cloud services. It is easy for small and medium-sized manufacturers to gain entry qualifications. There is no other way to survive than to have specific market advantages or to deeply cultivate market segments. “From the perspective of business path, it is not wrong for Meituan and Suning to deploy cloud computing business after Alibaba and JD. Half of the market share is more than three times that of the second place. If it is similar to the business model of giant cloud services, it will be too difficult to survive.”
After Ucloud landed on the Growth Enterprise Market, its co-founder and COO Hua Kun once said frankly that fighting with giants will definitely end, and choosing waist customers with competitive prices and striving for neutral head customers is the way to survive.
The rivalry between the giants is in full swing
Small and medium-sized cloud computing vendors like Ucloud, which are small and beautiful, and have deep cultivation in specific markets, are very rare, and more are giant crocodiles such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, which are large in scale and have sufficient cash flow to support them. The cloud computing market competition between giants will be a continuous test of overall capability and a long-term contest of comprehensive strength.
Alibaba Cloud is firmly in the leading position in the financial, Internet, and new retail industries; Tencent Cloud continues to leverage its advantages in connecting consumers in tourism, people’s livelihood services, Internet services and Industrial verticals; Baidu Smart Cloud’s powerful AI capabilities make it a stable domestic cloud The first camp of manufacturers.
ICT (Information and Communication Technology) companies rely on their
The advantages at the infrastructure level are also gradually entering the cloud computing market. On March 31, Inspur announced at the 2020 fiscal year conference that the valuation of Inspur Cloud exceeded 10 billion yuan, and this year, it sought to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board; on the same day, Huawei’s annual report first mentioned “cloud and computing”. It has entered the fast lane and has grown more than 3 times in 2019.
The strength of telecom operators should not be underestimated. In November of the year that Alibaba Cloud entered the market, China Mobile’s cloud computing platform “Big Cloud” plan was announced. Today, 80 data centers support China Mobile’s related cloud services. Telecom operators’ financial reports show that China Telecom has 315 cloud re
