As the largest manufacturing country, China has the most complete industrial categories in the world, however, the core industrial software field is always the soft rib of China’s industrial development. At present, the development of China’s core industrial software industry lags behind developed countries for about 20 years, and 80% of industrial software is monopolized by foreign companies. Industrial software has been used by the United States as a fulcrum to cut off supply and “jam the neck” in Sino-US trade frictions, which is directly related to the survival and development of Chinese enterprises and the security and stability of the industrial chain and supply chain. Vigorously developing industrial software and promoting the autonomy and controllability of core industrial software is not only the only way to build a “manufacturing power” in China, but also an important starting point to enhance the international competitiveness of the industry, and the fundamental basis for ensuring the safety and resilience of China’s industrial chain and supply chain.

Drawing on the concept of natural ecosystem, industrial ecosystem refers to the factors that affect industrial development and their interaction, including the members of enterprises in the industry and their mutual relations, the upstream and downstream relations of the industrial chain, and the supporting conditions for industrial development (public service system, industrial policy and competition policy, social, economic and cultural conditions, etc.). The industrial ecosystem includes but is not limited to the industrial chain, which has richer content than the industrial chain. This paper analyzes the composition of industrial software industry chain, summarizes the characteristics of global industrial software industry ecosystem, analyzes the competitiveness of China’s industrial software industry and the reasons for its weakness, and finally puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the competitiveness of China’s industrial software industry and enhance the ability of autonomy and control.

First, industrial software industry chain

Industrial software industry chain can be divided into upstream, midstream and downstream three links. As shown in Figure 1, the upstream is mainly the hardware and software that provide basic services for the manufacturing of industrial software products, such as computer equipment, operating systems, development tools and middleware. The middle stream mainly includes R&D and design software, production control software, business management software and embedded software. Among them, R & D design software is mainly used in the design process, is the main tool of digital R & D innovation, can improve product development efficiency, reduce development costs, improve product quality; Production control software is mainly used in the production process to help enterprises improve the control level of the manufacturing process and improve the efficiency and utilization of production equipment. Business management software is mainly used to improve the management and governance level and operation efficiency of enterprises. Embedded software is software based on embedded system design, which is used to realize the control, monitoring, management and other functions of other devices. In downstream applications, industrial software is widely used in machinery and equipment, automobile manufacturing, energy and power, aerospace, industrial communications and security electronics and other fields and links.
At present, in the Chinese market, the upstream and middle reaches of the industrial software industry chain are dominated by foreign manufacturers, which have the most cutting-edge talents, technology and innovation resources, and control the entire ecosystem. In recent years, with the play of cost advantages and the collection of human resources, China’s industrial software enterprises have obtained a higher market share in some fields, and gradually occupy a place in the middle and high-end of the industrial chain by increasing research and development investment, and initially gain the right to speak in the industrial chain. In the downstream link of the industrial chain, based on the digital model, China’s industrial software has developed industrial mobile phone software to meet the needs of various professional application fields, and the development prospect is promising.

Based on the purpose of the product, industrial software can be divided into R&D software, production control software, business management software and embedded software. Because China’s past industrial digitization path tends to be “heavy hard light soft”, and embedded software is mostly integrated with hardware sales, so from the sales point of view, embedded industrial software market is the largest, close to 100 billion yuan; The second and third industrial software in the production control and business management categories has benefited from industrial automation and enterprise digital upgrading, and has achieved rapid development in the past few years. The R & D and design software is affected by the domestic software industry environment, and has the smallest market share at present, which has become the focus and difficulty of China’s industrial structure transformation and upgrading in the era of Industry 4.0