science and Innovation Board daily (Shanghai, reporter Huang Xinyi) – China’s UAV giant Dajiang was recently blocked from using its account by the US UI interface design software company figma. “Dajiang has been named on the sanctions list issued by the United States. Therefore, according to U.S. law, figma can no longer provide you with access to the software, and we have begun to freeze your figma account,” figma said in an email statement
At present, similar design platforms such as pixso, mastergo under blue lake, codesign and instant design of Tencent, which are incubated by Wondershare Technology Group Co.Ltd(300624) A-share listed companies, have launched the function of importing figma files at the first time, indicating that they can provide assistance for migrating figma files.
Several insiders told reporters that the field of UI design in China is still dominated by foreign software, China National Software And Service Company Limited(600536) generally low popularity and low coverage. However, compared with industrial basic software, this kind of application tool software is more replaceable, and domestic software is expected to be further popularized in the future.
American UI design software dominates
Figma is an American online interface design collaboration tool. In June 2021, it completed the e-round financing of US $200 million, and the post investment valuation reached US $10 billion.
Guotai Junan Securities Co.Ltd(601211) Securities Research Report shows that figma, founded in 2012, is a web-based interface design cooperation tool, which can save the project in the cloud at all times, so as to ensure that multiple users can comment or modify the design in real time.
It has three remarkable features: real-time collaboration, vector grid and version history . Most importantly, this tool is very convenient. It can process more than 20 sketchboards in a document at the same time.
The research report also said that figma is a software that can be used on the whole platform. As long as users can open web pages, they can theoretically use this tool. It does not need to occupy local memory to store files, and can even share the design to everyone in the form of a link. By the end of 2021, the value of the financing round reached US $10 billion.
At present, this track in China is also hot. Blue lake completed three rounds of financing in 2021, with the C + round financing up to 1 billion yuan, with the participation of well-known investment institutions such as Sequoia Capital and Jinshajiang venture capital. Real time design has also been continuously financed to round B within one year, attracting Hillhouse venture capital, SIG Haina Asia, source capital, etc.
Wondershare Technology Group Co.Ltd(300624) , A-share listed company, spun off its UI design platform pixso and completed ten million seed rounds of investment. In addition, Wondershare Technology Group Co.Ltd(300624) also strategically controls the ink knife, China’s online design and cooperation platform. Affected by this news, Wondershare Technology Group Co.Ltd(300624) once ushered in the intraday limit, with the highest share price of 43.81 yuan. As of the closing on March 11, Wondershare Technology Group Co.Ltd(300624) share price was 42.04 yuan, up 15.15%.
Although there are a large number of Chinese participants, according to the research of the reporter of science and Innovation Board daily, American design software such as figma, Adobe XD and sketch still control most of the market.
A senior designer told reporters that the field of UI design is still dominated by foreign software. Among them, sketch is the most popular, Adobe XD is the most compatible, and figma, as a rising star, has advantages in cloud collaboration .
The designer told the science and Innovation Board daily that foreign software is powerful and genuine free, resulting in less space for domestic software dominated by imitation.
“For example, Adobe XD is one of the few free software under adobe, a design software company. It is compatible with PS, AI, AE and other design files, and has an unlimited plug-in library. There are almost no functions and special effects that cannot be found. At present, domestic software is basically based on imitation and catch-up, and there is a certain gap in function and experience.”
is highly replaceable
According to the 2020 data of forward looking Industry Research Institute, Dajiang UAV occupies 70% of China’s UAV market, and internationally, it also occupies more than 80% of the global UAV market, ranking first in the UAV market.
Xie Tiandi, public relations director of Dajiang, once said: “every part that Dajiang UAV can disassemble is produced by itself, and the underlying code is its own. No matter it is a patent or research method, it is difficult for any UAV company to bypass Dajiang.”
According to a person in the drone industry, the trouble with this figma “ban” on Dajiang is that Dajiang can not continue to use figma software, and the files in the cloud can not be downloaded and backed up immediately. As of the press time of the reporter of the Ministry of science and innovation daily, Dajiang has not responded to this.
However, some insiders said, although there is still a certain distance from figma and other software in terms of popularity, coverage and experience, it is not difficult for UI design software to be localized
“After all, this is not a basic software, and it can’t be compared with software such as 3D design and AE. UI design software not only has a considerable number of substitutes abroad, but also has many similar products in China, which is too replaceable.” One it person said.
A senior CIO said that the ban would not have a great impact on Dajiang. “There are many software similar to figma. Although figma may do better in some aspects, it is not irreplaceable. In the long run, it has little impact on Dajiang, but some impact on short-term work habits.”
Some designers pointed out that the difficulty of replacing software mainly lies in file migration. “Migrating component libraries and design manuscripts from figma to other software is a troublesome task, which takes a lot of time and energy.”
As cloud design software, a large number of enterprise design drafts need to be uploaded to figma’s cloud server for storage. According to figma’s email, Dajiang’s design documents will be sent to Dajiang by email or other means in the next two weeks, and these documents will not be deleted. If Dajiang is eventually removed from the list of sanctioned parties, access may be restored
or will promote China National Software And Service Company Limited(600536) universal application
An IT person believes that this incident means that SaaS, or a system based on remote server copyright verification, has a certain risk.
However, the person in charge of design SaaS software stressed that even the local software can lock the account, so there is little difference between SAAS and local software, unless it is completely disconnected.
In 2020, the well-known simulation software MATLAB stopped Authorizing China’s Harbin Institute of technology, Harbin Engineering and other universities because it was included in the “entity list” by the United States.
In recent years, a number of policies have been issued at the national level to support the development and application of industrial software and speed up the filling of technical shortcomings. The outline of the 14th five year plan clearly stipulates that we should actively and steadily develop the industrial Internet and speed up the completion of bottlenecks and shortcomings such as basic software . China’s provinces and cities have also successively released the policy content of industrial software, referring to accelerating the digital transformation of manufacturing industry, accelerating the research and development of industrial software, strengthening the development of industrial app, etc
Bu Rixin, general manager of chuangdao investment consulting, analyzed that to some extent, this kind of application tool software is not afraid of sanctions, but can help the popularization and ecological construction of relevant software in China.
A CIO of a well-known Chinese IT enterprise also believes that this event has a boosting effect on software localization, but the specific landing speed also depends on the acceptance of Party A in different fields At present, the difficulty lies in the scale of the application and localization of the system, but there are still some difficulties in the application and localization of the system.
