Asustek, the hottest Acer, is struggling to catch

Acer and ASUS' post PC era: struggling to catch up with AI

Acer and ASUS' post PC era: struggling to catch up with AI

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original title: Acer and ASUS' post PC era: struggling to catch up with AI

Author: Xu Mengqiao

PC recession has not been a thing for nearly two years

as early as 2004, IBM decided to sell PC business to Lenovo because of the high input-output ratio of personal PC business. At the same time, the domestic Internet era is about to rise. Based on geographical and other special reasons, the PC products of the former IBM have been warmed up in Lenovo's hands

however, the once hot PC sales did not continue, and the global PC shipments began to decline to varying degrees from 2010. In the upsurge of technological innovation, traditional PC manufacturers have been affected

in the industry, we feel the sluggish growth of PC revenue and the coming decline of PC. traditional PC manufacturers are either determined, or struggling, or are forced to "choose" transformation after hindsight, and the direction of transformation -

at this stage, HP is in the midst of transformation, constantly changing its CEO; Dell acquired Perot Systems, an IT service provider, and began to march into enterprise solution services; IBM is the most successful one. In recent years, it has realized the transformation from a hardware manufacturer to a service provider

local PCs also began to suffer from the decline of business. Facing the impact and opportunities of the new era and new technology, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS took different actions

Lenovo: HPC (high performance computer group) + AI

Lenovo is the most famous domestic PC enterprise. As an old enterprise established in 1984, it needs continuous evolution to ensure that it will not be eliminated in today's and future technological waves. Therefore, Lenovo has also made several major transformations in the past 30 years

Dell, Hewlett Packard and other traditional front-line PC manufacturers have successively deployed enterprise level services such as servers, storage and it services outside the PC business, and Lenovo is the same

from the first IA (Intel CPU) server launched by Lenovo in 1995, to the first set of servers with trillions of computing power in China in 2002 - ShenTeng 1800, and then to the first server with billions of computing power in China in 2009 - ShenTeng 7000... Lenovo server products continue to evolve iteratively

in 2014, Lenovo became the world's top three and China's largest x86 server manufacturer by acquiring IBM's x86 server business. Server is an important part of HPC (high performance computer group), and this acquisition is also known as the turning point of supercomputing development in China

however, x86 servers are relatively low-end and have low gross profit. At that time, IBM was also strategically abandoned because it specializes in cloud computing. At the same time, because Lenovo lacks enterprise level service genes, some supporting software facilities can't keep up, and its shipment volume was often lower than that of Inspur and Huawei in early years

with the advent of the era of cloud server and AI server, Lenovo has to look for transformation again - the infrastructure suitable for AI has become the key layout direction of Lenovo. This year, Lenovo officially released its self-developed new AI server at its global supercomputing summit

at the same time, it also launched the third-generation warm water cooling solution "Neptune" system, which includes warm water cooling technology and hybrid cooling technology, so that the operation efficiency of the data center can be improved by up to 50%. According to the latest global HPC 500 list, Lenovo ranks first among HPC supercomputing manufacturers with 117 sets of shares, accounting for 23.8%

in addition, Lenovo has also invested a lot in the application direction of artificial intelligence industry. Its Lenovo venture capital has provided financial support for excellent artificial intelligence enterprises such as Kuangshi technology and Cambrian technology, which also provides external impetus for technological evolution within Lenovo. In 2017, Lenovo Research Institute developed computer vision and natural language solutions, involving medical image aided diagnosis, intelligent education and other industries

artificial intelligence company invested by Lenovo venture capital (source: it orange)

Acer: driverless and AI education

Acer was also a famous brand among domestic PCs in that year. In the post PC era, this company is also full of crises. According to Gartner, Acer's global PC market share was 6.2% in 2018, down 8.6% year-on-year. This situation has actually lasted for several years

2018q1 global PC manufacturers' shipments (source: Gartner)

in the face of the reduction of PC shipments, Acer chose the e-sports industry as a hemostatic point. Acer launched e-sports game books, VR devices, E-sports screens, E-sports chairs, etc. by cooperating with lol and King glory S7, the growth rate of its full range of revenue reached 129% at the end of 2017

although the scale of E-sports market may be considerable in the future, and E-sports has also improved the business conditions of traditional PC manufacturers, more and more hardware players are flooding in the industry, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce

the popularity of E-sports in China in the past two years is also mainly due to the limited virtuous cycle of capital speculation, and facing the uncertainty of traditional Chinese social concepts and policies, there may be risks in the e-sports industry in the future

compared with being limited to the smaller e-sports industry, we should take a longer-term view, comply with the general trend of artificial intelligence, accelerate technological innovation, and transform to enterprise service end, which can obtain stronger competitiveness in the future

in terms of underlying computing power, Acer has deployed more than 30 HPCS worldwide, which is far behind Lenovo. However, Acer is different from other manufacturers in application

in the application of artificial intelligence industry, driverless driving is one of the hottest directions in the past two years. Where is the fire? In addition to e-sports, Acer has become the first PC company to be involved in driverless driving

in September this year, Taiwan released the first pair of L4 level driverless concept car LUXGEN S3 ev+ with surface Rockwell hardness, which was jointly developed by Yulong group, Taiwan's largest automobile manufacturing group, and Acer

Acer provides it with cloud intelligence and sensing technology, including real-time dynamic positioning technology, optical radar, millimeter wave radar, ultrasonic, image recognition, driving dynamic decision-making, etc. combined with the deep learning technology of artificial intelligence

luxgen S3 ev+

in addition, smart education is another industry application foothold of Acer. Among the smart education solutions, Acer not only provides its huge hardware equipment system and cloud server, but also includes the man-machine dialogue solution for the oral English test of the college entrance examination

this scheme makes use of deep learning technology and can provide intelligent evaluation function similar to English fluency, which is also a meaningful application direction for Acer to lay out AI and get through the software and hardware system

ASUS: + robot

in the PC era, ASUS motherboard and graphics card once dominated among domestic PC manufacturers. Worldwide, ASUS is also the largest motherboard manufacturer and the third largest graphics card manufacturer. However, such a powerful company in those days has also become difficult in the post PC era

first of all, Asustek PC shipments began to decline from the growth rate in 2013. One year later, it was the fifth largest in the world. Please use the "query/print" button to print this content in advance. The name of large PC manufacturers has been replaced by apple. In 2018q1, ASUS' shipment volume fell by 12.5% compared with the same period in 2017

the operating revenue of Asustek in the whole third quarter was 102.7 billion new Taiwan dollars, an increase of 14% month on month compared with the second quarter, but a sharp drop of 10% compared with the third quarter of last year. After the PC recession, ASUS did not invest too much in the HPC industry chain, and ASUS could not be seen among the top HPC manufacturers in the world

like Acer, in order to improve the dilemma, Asustek established a high-end brand "Rog player country" to focus on the e-sports market, and its sales of game books and game servers continued to grow at a time when the e-sports industry was hot

ASUS' AI, to be honest, does not have many highlights

arguably, Asustek was once one of the world's top 500 companies, with an annual income of more than 120billion. With the support of this capital and technical strength, Huashuo mainly focuses on automation technology, robots, smart home and innovative enterprises. If Shuo paid attention to research and development or investment in new technologies a few years ago, it should have advantages in software and hardware facilities such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence

however, it doesn't. In addition to HPC's lack of advantages, ASUS' AI industry applications are also relatively slow

at present, ASUS AI has two main application directions, one is AI application of mobile terminal, and the other is zenbo qrobot intelligent robot

in February this year, ASUS released the new zenfone 5, in which AI technology is applied in camera, acceleration and charging. However, in addition to the AI intelligent temperature regulation function of the camera, the application value of AI intelligent regulation acceleration and the so-called AI charging according to the app performance is questionable, even with or without AI technology

among apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, oppo, vivo and many other competitors, ASUS, which entered the game late, does not have a competitive advantage. If I hadn't written this article, I wouldn't know that ASUS still has

according to Taiwan media reports, ASUS' sales target for smart phones is 20million in 2018, but the target for 2019 is reduced to 12million, only half of this year. It seems that Asustek's road is really not easy

zenbo qrobot robot is an AI product launched by ASUS in China at the end of 2017. In addition to home and medical care, Asus has also embedded business management functions in the robot, which will be introduced to hotels, finance, retail, catering and other service places in the future

the core applications of artificial intelligence in the small cloth robot are automatic following based on slam technology and intelligent voice interaction technology. Auto follow is self-developed by ASUS AI research institute, and voice interaction is developed in cooperation with Tencent cloud microenterprise platform

zenbo qrobot intelligent robot

although this robot may seem quite promising for commercialization, there are only so many ASUS AI applications that can be seen at present

moreover, from the perspective of ASUS' overall product system, it is still in the thinking of one system with extensive demand in the field of high-end utilization. Although Asus has established a research institute to develop AI related technologies since 2008, the results presented to the world are really poor, and the slow progress of technology iteration is also the main reason for Asus' poor development in recent years

Li Kaifu once commented on Taiwan: Taiwan has always been guided by hardware thinking, resulting in it missing a lot of opportunities during the software revolution, the network revolution and the mobile Internet revolution

this problem can also be seen from the development of Acer and ASUS, which are difficult brothers in Taiwan. Although Lenovo also has some problems, Lenovo has improved its sensitivity to new technologies, new directions and new opportunities through the CVC foreign investment model, which has increased its possibility to find certainty in the uncertain technological changes in the future, and also improved the life of the enterprise