Microsoft has been approved to acquire Activision Blizzard and has cleared all obstacles
On October 13th, the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) issued a statement stating that it had approved Microsoft's revised acquisition of Activision Blizzard, but did not include the copyright of cloud games. CMA stated that Microsoft made a concession in August this year and Ubisoft will purchase the cloud game rights of Activision Blizzard. At the end of April, the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard on the grounds of impaired gaming competition. CMA believes that the merger may bring higher prices, fewer options, and less innovation to UK players. Subsequently, Activision Blizzard will raise objections together with Microsoft and appeal to the UK Competition Appeals Court.
Comment: This approval means that the largest game acquisition in history worth $68.7 billion has crossed the last hurdle. On July 11th, Microsoft obtained permission from a US court to continue advancing the Activision Blizzard deal, leaving only the UK as the last obstacle.
The United States allows Samsung Electronics to supply semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China
On October 9th, the Office of the President of South Korea reported that the United States agreed to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix providing equipment to their factories in China without the need for other licenses. In other words, the two semiconductor companies mentioned above can supply semiconductor equipment containing American technology to Chinese factories without the need for separate approval. Samsung Electronics responded to First Financial that through close coordination with relevant governments, the uncertainty of Samsung Electronics' semiconductor production line operations in China has been greatly eliminated. The company will continue to closely cooperate with all relevant governments to maintain a stable supply chain for the global semiconductor industry.
Comment: Under the indefinite exemption, the US Department of Commerce will add these two chip manufacturers to its "Verified End Users" (VEUs) list, which indicates which entities can receive exports of various US technologies. Once listed, chip manufacturers will no longer need new licenses for separate export cases. Currently, Samsung Electronics produces NAND flash memory in Xi'an, SK Hynix produces DRAM chips at its Wuxi factory, and NAND flash memory in Dalian.
Changes in Huawei Concept Stocks on the Oufeiguang Harvest Sixth Board
On October 13th, Oufeiguang raised its limit and gained six consecutive boards. There are reports that all of the OFI camera modules are involved in the supply of Huawei's Mate 60 series mobile phones, accounting for the vast majority of the market share. Regarding Huawei's mobile phone orders, Chairman Cai Rongjun of Oufeiguang responded exclusively to First Financial, "stubbornly alive
At the same time, the reporter learned from the recruitment personnel of Oufeiguang that Oufeiguang has Huawei business, and currently, factories related to lens modules and other businesses are still hiring. Last year, the gross profit margin of OFI optical and optoelectronic products was still negative, and it has turned positive in the first half of this year.
Comment: The weak demand in the mobile phone market has affected the performance of companies in the lens module and other industry chains. Ophigo was previously "kicked out" of the Apple industry chain, and its revenue declined and suffered losses in 2021 and 2022. The return of Huawei's mobile phone business undoubtedly brings opportunities to industry chain companies such as Oufeiguang. However, it should be noted that the overall recovery of the mobile phone market still needs time, and the impact of Huawei's orders remains to be observed.
NVIDIA cancels offline meetings of the Israeli AI Summit and worries about the investment prospects of the "Innovation City"
Due to concerns about the security situation in Israel, Nvidia will cancel the offline meeting of the annual AI summit originally scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv from October 15th to 16th. Nvidia has confirmed this news to First Financial reporters, mainly for the safety of participants, and the arrangement of the online meeting needs further confirmation. According to the original plan, Nvidia will showcase its latest progress in the field of artificial intelligence on the occasion of the AI Summit, and Nvidia founder and CEO Huang Renxun will also give a keynote speech at the AI Summit.
Comment: Tel Aviv has always been considered an important "innovation capital" globally, with many artificial intelligence hardware and software researchers and developers located in Israel. The original NVIDIA AI Summit theme covers a wide range of AI applications, such as generative AI, healthcare, large-scale language models, network security, robots, the metauniverse and autonomous vehicle. In the past decade, high-tech has been the fastest-growing industry in Israel, accounting for 14% of employment and nearly one-fifth of economic output. But since the beginning of this year, the turbulent situation in Israel has affected its attractiveness in high-tech investment.
Didi autonomous driving received $149 million investment from GAC
On October 12th, Didi Autonomous Driving announced its acquisition of investment from GAC Group. GAC Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GAC Group, and Guangzhou Development Zone Investment Group will jointly establish a special fund in an equal proportion, with an investment of no more than 149 million US dollars in Didi autonomous driving.
According to Didi, after this investment, Didi's autonomous driving will continue to increase investment in technology research and development, accelerate the promotion of product applications and open cooperation in the industrial chain, and promote the large-scale and commercial application of autonomous driving. Since the beginning of this year, Didi has been continuously expanding its autonomous driving business and actively seeking financing.
Comment: In terms of driving development business, Didi's strategy is to continue promoting autonomous driving, while businesses such as electric driving have been abandoned. On August 28th, Didi announced that it would sell assets and research and development capabilities related to the smart electric vehicle project to Xiaopeng. From the perspective of Didi, intelligent electric vehicles are currently entering a development bottleneck. In terms of the progress of autonomous driving business, on May 10th, Didi Autonomous Driving Company and GAC Aian New Energy Vehicle Co., Ltd. jointly released the unmanned new energy mass production vehicle project - the "AIDI Plan". On April 13th, Didi announced its first future service concept car, the DiDi Neuron.
The release of "Chapter Nine and Chapter Three" to further realize Feynman's dream of quantum computing
On October 11, the University of Science and Technology of China announced that the research team composed of Pan Jianwei, Lu Chaoyang, etc. of the university, in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology and the National Research Center for Parallel Computer Engineering Technology, has successfully built a 255 photon quantum computing prototype "Chapter Nine and Three", which has once again set a new world record for the technical level of quantum information and the superiority of quantum computing. The international academic journal "Physical Review Letters" published this achievement on the same day. This also means that China has taken another important step on the path of developing quantum computers.
Comment: The successful construction of "Nine Chapters and Three Numbers" has multiple meanings. Professor Lu Chaoyang from the University of Science and Technology of China told reporters from First Financial that the first step is to make the dreams of Feynman and others 40 years ago come true; The second is to develop scalable quantum control technologies during the development process of Chapter 9, providing a technical foundation for the development of general-purpose quantum computers with fault tolerance capabilities; Thirdly, in the fierce international competition, the implementation of "Nine Chapters and Three" has further consolidated China's international leading position in the field of quantum computing; Finally, it opens up applications in practical problems such as graph theory.
Unreal engines will charge for non gaming areas
The dispute over the pricing rules of the game engine Unity remains unresolved. At the recent Unreal Carnival 2023 conference, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney stated that for non gaming industries such as automobiles, Unreal Engine will shift to charging seat based enterprise software license fees next year. Game engines have been widely used in industrial fields such as film and television, virtual photography, and automotive visualization. In these fields, illusions have the advantages of dynamic rendering.
After the new fee policy, the chairman and CEO of the company resigned. The announcement states that John Riccitiello will continue to provide advice to Unity to ensure a smooth transition. Unity has caused great controversy due to fee adjustment policies. Unity announced on its official website that it will levy a runtime fee of "Unity Runtime Fee" on eligible game products starting from January 1, 2024, with a single installation fee ranging from 0.01 to 0.2 US dollars. The announcement of Unity has caused a stir in the gaming industry, and multiple developers have collectively expressed dissatisfaction and protest.
Comment: Several practitioners in the film and television industry believe that the advantage of virtual engines was not only free, but their dynamic rendering function just made up for the shortcomings of traditional offline rendering tools. However, virtual engines still have the problem of being "acclimatized" in these fields. Behind Unity and Fantasy's successive decisions to modify pricing, the game engine company has encountered financial pressure. Epic has long been hesitant to charge high fees for Fantasy engines, but other businesses outside of Fantasy are now difficult to support the company's operations. If such commercial game engine companies find it difficult to support the operation of their engine business and turn to price increases, it may help them turn to self developed engines.
China Mobile expects its revenue to exceed trillion yuan by the end of 2023
Yang Jie, Party Secretary and Chairman of China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd., revealed at the main forum of the 2023 China Mobile Global Partner Conference that China Mobile expects the company's revenue scale to exceed trillion yuan in 2023. In addition, Yang Jie pointed out that the current revenue share of China Mobile's voice and SMS services has decreased from 77% 10 years ago to 8.8% now, and the proportion of China Mobile's digital transformation revenue has increased to 29.4%.
Comment: According to the 2022 annual report data of China Mobile, the annual operating revenue of China Mobile in 2022 was RMB 937.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, with communication service revenue reaching RMB 812.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.1%. Thanks to the rapid expansion of businesses such as 5G applications, mobile cloud, digital content, and smart homes, the revenue from digital transformation reached 207.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.3%. According to Yang Jie's prediction, China Mobile's total operating revenue will exceed trillion yuan for the first time by the end of 2023.
Huawei Hu Houkun Talks on How to Improve 5G Network Investment Return
At the 2023 China Mobile Partner Conference, Hu Houkun, the newly appointed chairman of Huawei, discussed topics such as how to help industry partners improve 5G network investment returns during his keynote speech. Hu Houkun stated that in the construction of 5G, Huawei will establish differentiated user experiences around "high bandwidth", "low latency", and "wide connectivity", in order to help partners improve the investment return of 5G networks.
Comment: The current 5G infrastructure construction of operators has passed its peak period and is gradually entering a profitable stage. In addition to helping industry partners pursue returns on 5G network investment, Huawei is also focusing on the verification of 5G-A technology and the exploration of business models in the near future. 5G-A is widely considered a necessary technology for transitioning from 5G to 6G.
Sullivan expects the AI medical imaging market to reach 50 billion yuan in 2023
The rapid development of AI big models has brought about a deeper integration of artificial intelligence and medical fields. Ninety percent of the data in the medical system is concentrated in imaging. The ability of artificial intelligence to organize and analyze large sample data is gradually improving, and the combination of AI and medical imaging is driving innovation in the medical industry. There are hundreds of AI companies in China that develop tools for medical imaging, such as lung nodules and breast assisted diagnosis. A recent report released by consulting firm Sullivan predicts that with the commercialization of AI imaging medical products, the market size of AI imaging medical products will increase from RMB 40 million in 2020 to RMB 50 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 102.7% during this period.
Comment: In China's tertiary hospitals, doctors are no longer unfamiliar with artificial intelligence. Medical imaging AI has shown great potential in improving diagnostic accuracy and increasing medical efficiency, but its commercial potential has not yet been fully realized. There are still many barriers that need to be overcome between artificial intelligence technology companies and medical institutions. Moreover, the development of artificial intelligence is expensive. Previously, the investment and financing market was sluggish, but according to data from Sullivan, the global and Chinese pharmaceutical investment and financing situation gradually turned marginal in the first half of 2023, especially with a significant increase in global biopharmaceutical investment and financing amounts in the second quarter of 2023. This trend may provide more fuel for the development of AI medical imaging.
Galanz wins the invention patent lawsuit against Meg
On October 11th, Galanz Group announced to the public that according to the Civil Judgment of the Supreme People's Court on October 7th (2022) No. 1584, the appeal case of Guangdong Galanz Microwave Oven Electrical Appliance Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (referred to as Galanz) and the respondent Zhongshan Meige Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as Meige Electronics) for infringement of invention patent rights has finally come to an end. The final judgment of the Supreme People's Court: Meige Electronics immediately stopped manufacturing and using riveting molds that infringed on Galanz's invention patent rights, destroyed the riveting molds, and compensated Galanz with economic losses of 10 million yuan and reasonable expenses for rights protection of 200000 yuan.
Comment: This patent dispute over the core components of a microwave oven lasted for three years. Magnetron is the core component of microwave ovens, and its production involves the riveting process of the shell and upper cover. Previously, Galanz purchased the "Power" microwave oven on multiple online shopping platforms, all of which were produced by Meg Electronics. It was believed that Meg Electronics had infringed on Galanz's invention patent for riveting cover molds. In the first instance judgment of this case, Meige Electronics did not infringe on Galanz's involved patent rights. Galanz was dissatisfied and filed an appeal. On April 26th of this year, the Intellectual Property Court of the Supreme People's Court held a public hearing to hear this appeal case. The final review results show that the country is increasing its efforts to protect intellectual property rights, and strict protection of intellectual property rights is to protect innovation and ensure innovative development.
Venture Capital Vanguard
A total of 99 investment and financing events occurred this week; From the industry distribution of financing events, healthcare, manufacturing, and automotive transportation ranked among the top, with 17, 13, and 12 related events respectively; From the perspective of the "number of shots" of investment and financing institutions, traditional VC and industrial capital coexist, and investment institutions are becoming more diversified. Fengrui Capital and Xi'an Finance and Economics are both on the list.
Among them, there were a total of 17 financing events in the healthcare industry this week, with A rounds being the main round and 3 financing events occurring; In terms of financing amount, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Cloud Health, Shende Medical, Haoyang Biological, and LifeShield Medical have raised over 100 million yuan; From the perspective of investment institutions, industrial capital, including AstraZeneca Zhongjin Medical Venture Capital Fund, Junlian Capital, and VC have all invested.
There were a total of 5 financing events in the artificial intelligence industry this week; From the perspective of rounds, Series A and D are the main ones, with two financing events each; From the perspective of financing amount, Jiuzhang Yunji DataCanvas and Radiant Intelligence have a financing amount of over 100 million yuan; From the perspective of investment institutions, both Zhongdian Smart Fund and Huamin Fund have a record of selling.