China's industrial software landscape has changed: global giants are now "rewriting" their products for China.

Why would a global giant suddenly rewrite a software suite for China?
Why would a global industrial software giant that has been in China for 30 years suddenly rewrite its software for the Chinese market?

On August 13, AVEVA released HMI (China Edition) 2026.
Its greatest significance may not be that it adds another HMI product, but that it signals one thing:

China's industrial software market is moving from "product localisation" to "product reconstruction."

01Why?

Why?
Because today's Chinese industrial sites are no longer simple replicas of overseas markets.
There are more domestic operating systems, more diverse PLC brands, and a wider variety of industrial protocols. Enterprises demand localisation, digitalisation, rapid delivery, and continuous iteration.
Even the development habits of engineers have changed compared to the past.

02First: Re-adapting to China's Ecosystem

So the first thing AVEVA did this time was to re-adapt to China's ecosystem.
Supporting domestic operating systems, adapting to major PLC brands both domestic and international, with special focus on testing China-local Schneider Electric PLCs, and ensuring stable connectivity to industrial internet technologies like MQTT.

03Second: Re-understanding How Chinese Engineers Work

The second thing is even more interesting:
It began to re-understand how Chinese engineers approach projects.
Low-code, drag-and-drop configuration, Python secondary development, recipes, permissions, electronic signatures...
These may look like features, but behind them lies a shift:

Industrial software is moving from "building features" to "helping engineers build projects faster."

04Third: Cross-Platform Means More Than "It Runs"

The third thing is cross-platform capability.
Many software products claim to be cross-platform, but that only means "it can run."
What AVEVA emphasises is:
What you develop on Windows should look exactly the same on Linux.
Behind this is a long-standing problem in industrial software:
It's not about whether the software can run, but whether enterprises can migrate, deploy, and maintain it at low cost.

05The Rules of Competition Have Changed

So you will find that this is no longer "localisation" in the traditional sense.
In the past, the core question of domestic substitution was:
"Is there a domestic software product that can replace it?"
Now the question is becoming:

"Who truly understands China's industrial sites?"

This is the change in the rules of competition.
For domestic industrial software vendors, this is pressure.
Because the competition is no longer just about price or features, but about ecosystem, protocols, engineering efficiency, and delivery capability.
But for Chinese manufacturing enterprises, this may actually be good news.
Because the ultimate purpose of true localisation has never been to simply replace a foreign software with a domestic one.
It is to make industrial software truly adapt to the production site.

06Next: The Direction May Reverse

What deserves even more attention is that there may be a next step to this.
For the past 30 years, global industrial software entered China, and Chinese enterprises learned from global industrial software.
But today, China has the world's most complex and complete manufacturing scenarios.
When these scenarios become complex enough to change software design, the direction may reverse.

What we truly need to observe in the future is not just "who replaces whom."
Rather, it is:

Will the experience accumulated from China's industrial sites begin to influence how global industrial software is designed?

So what AVEVA rewrote this time may not just be an HMI suite.
What it may have redefined is the way global industrial software understands the Chinese market.