Core Insights - The natural language processing (NLP) industry in China is projected to reach a market size of approximately 12.6 billion yuan in 2024, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 14.55% [1][15] - The cost of model training has significantly decreased due to the "East Data West Computing" initiative, which provides low-cost computing power, and the adoption of few-shot learning frameworks has reduced the demand for training data by 90% [1][15] - Major companies in the NLP sector include Baidu, iFlytek, and Alibaba, each leveraging their technological strengths to capture market share in various applications [2][17][21] Industry Overview - NLP is a crucial branch of computer science and artificial intelligence, aimed at enabling computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language [1][8] - The technology types in NLP are primarily categorized into rule-based methods, statistical methods, and deep learning methods [1][8] Industry Development History - The development of NLP in China has gone through four main stages: the initial phase (1950s-60s) focused on machine translation, the rule-dominated phase (1970s-80s) involved complex rule systems, the statistical learning phase (1990s-2012) integrated statistical models with machine learning, and the deep learning phase (2013-present) is characterized by the dominance of deep learning models and pre-trained language models [4][5][6] Industry Value Chain - The upstream of the NLP industry chain includes hardware devices, data services, open-source models, and cloud services, while the midstream focuses on NLP technology research and development, and the downstream encompasses applications in finance, healthcare, education, and smart manufacturing [1][8] Market Size - The NLP industry in China is experiencing significant growth, with a projected market size of 12.6 billion yuan in 2024, driven by advancements in pre-trained language models and reduced training costs [1][15] Key Companies' Performance - Baidu leads the NLP industry with a strong technological foundation and extensive commercialization, maintaining the largest market share [17][21] - iFlytek excels in voice recognition and machine translation, particularly in the education and healthcare sectors [17][20] - Alibaba has made breakthroughs in machine reading comprehension and natural language understanding, integrating its technology into various business scenarios [17][20] Industry Development Trends - The NLP industry is witnessing a trend towards the integration of large models and multimodal capabilities, enhancing performance and user interaction [24] - There is a growing focus on vertical applications in sectors like healthcare and finance, as well as the integration of NLP with smart hardware [26] - Data security and ethical standards are becoming increasingly important, driving sustainable development in the NLP sector [27]