Images from US 3D computer-animated film Toy Story 3 released earlier this year. [Global Times]
Chen Zekun looks almost the same as his fifth-grade primary school peers. But when he sits before the computer, his design skills amaze even the most tech savvy adults. The 10-year-old boy's wildest dreams - from warriors with wings to household robots - come to life on the screen.
"I found my son had a talent for 3D design three years ago, by chance," said Chen Shaoping, who owns a computer graphic production house in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi Province. "He became interested when he saw one of our designers work on 3D design, and then taught himself."
The boy spends most of his free time creating his own virtual worlds. "I also like playing games such as World of Warcraft," he said. "But it's more interesting to create game characters of my own."
Yet his hobby was discouraged by his school teachers, until he got an opportunity to showcase his talent at a design forum held by Autodesk, when he became the world's youngest talent to be certified for Autodesk 3D Max Design software.
The California-headquartered design software giant, which helped architects real-ize the Bird's Nest and James Cameron create Avatar, want to find more youngsters like Chen as a means of consolidating its leadership in China's design-software field.
Price wars
Some say the days of designing with paper, pencils and erasers are gone. Nowadays computer-aided design (CAD) software is widely used across the architecture, manufacturing and entertainment sectors. It has become the main tool for architects and engineers designing anything from pavilions at the Shanghai Expo to furniture in an IKEA store.
"Domestic sales of CAD software amounted to 2 billion yuan ($301 million) last year, and the figure is still growing as more companies realize the importance of design," said Cao Yujie, consultant director of CCW Research, an IT market research and consulting agency in Beijing.
Figures from CCW Research show that Autodesk occupied 40.9 percent of China's CAD software market in 2009, followed by multinationals Siemens PLM Software (formerly US and Parametric Technology Corporation, as well local developers CAXA Technology Co, ZWCAD Software (ZWSOFT) and Gstar Soft.
Autodesk's market leading position is partly due to price-cutting promotions targeting the Chinese market, after it began axing retail prices of CAD software by 80 percent to 6,000 yuan ($903) a shot, almost the same as domestic price tags.
"We are selling about five times the number of licenses we were selling before the price change, and our revenues went up as well," said Autodesk's Senior Vice President Patrick Williams.
Williams said the promotion aims to provide access to as many people in China as possible, and tries to lower the barriers for unlicensed users to use it legally, rather than pirated versions.
But the discount sparked a price war when domestic companies ZWSOFT and Gstar Soft also lowered their CAD software prices by 50 percent to less than 3,000 yuan ($452).
"Autodesk's price-cutting strategy posed challenges to us, but we reacted quickly and our business has not been affected much," said Liu Shijin, marketing manager of ZWSOFT.
"Multinationals such as Autodesk and Adobe are forced to cut prices to maintain their market shares in China, because they face increasing threats from local software developers," said Cao from CCW Research.
"Local companies should concentrate more on improving their products and services, otherwise their price advantages will decrease."
But he said lowering prices couldn't solve all problems. "Piracy always exists, what software companies can do is provide more value-added services to attract legal users," he said.
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