China’s artificial intelligence (AI) market size will probably reach RMB 10 billion (USD 1.5 billion) by 2020.
These predictions were made by ASKCI Consulting Co, a business research firm based in Shenzhen. These figures exclude the sales revenue from hardware products, targeted advertising services, and information search and distribution services.
Faced with an aging population, problems executing economic transition, and the need to upgrade China’s manufacturing industry, the State Council of China has issued a policy in May 2015 called “Made in China 2025”. One of its aims is to support technological innovation in AI, and help AI companies “achieve an output value exceeding RMB 10 billion”.
With this policy support, Chinese companies have put into widespread use a number of intelligent technologies, including character and voice recognition, Chinese language information processing, and biometric features recognition.
In 2015, there were 48 institutions investing in AI in China; this is a 71.4% year-on-year (YoY) increase, six times the 2012 number. The investment volume reached RMB 1.4 billion, a 75.7% YoY increase, 23 times the 2012 number.
As per capita disposable income increases and the ageing demographic problem worsens, the Chinese market will call for more domestic robots for medical, cleaning and domestic help. Overall, all signs show there will be plenty of demand for AI in China’s future.
(Top photo from pixabay.com)
