competitive advantages, and provide a basis for the
trading, pledging, and investment of data assets (Xie
Kang et al., 2020). However, due to the limitations of
enterprises' data management awareness and
capabilities, as well as the lack of relevant laws and
accounting rules, listed companies that present data
assets in the form of accounting items and
monetization and actively disclose information
account for less than 3% of the total market. The
massive amounts of data owned by most enterprises
have not yet become a source of value for production
and development (Cleveland H., 1982).
Considering that Merit Interactive Company
included data assets in its financial statements
relatively early, this paper takes Merit Interactive
Company as the research object, adopts the
longitudinal single-case study method and the
literature research method, and studies its financial
reports for the first three quarters of 2024. It explores
the practice of the accounting treatment and
disclosure of its data assets, and further discusses the
possible economic consequences. This study aims to
make contributions in two aspects: On the one hand,
it acquires and refines the application practices of the
businesses related to enterprises' data assets; on the
other hand, it explores and analyzes the possible
economic consequences that the inclusion of data
assets in financial statements may bring to data-
driven intelligent enterprises, so as to help enterprises
make the value of data assets explicit and enhance
their data competitiveness.
2 THE BUSINESS SITUATION OF
MERIT INTERACTIVE'S DATA
RESOURCES
2.1 The Formation Methods and
Application Scenarios of Data
Assets
The formation methods of data assets: Firstly, the
original data mainly comes from the company's
developer services. The accumulated data resources
are legally collected on the premise of users'
authorized consent, forming the original data of
relevant data resources, including device information,
network information, scenario information, APP
characteristics, etc. As of the first half of 2024, the
cumulative installation volume of the company's
software development kit (SDK) has exceeded 110
billion, the cumulative installation volume of the
software development kit (SDK) for smart Internet of
Things (IoT) devices has exceeded 370 million, and
the number of daily active independent devices (with
duplicates removed) of the SDK has exceeded 400
million. Secondly, a dedicated data team conducts in-
depth insights and governance on the data,
accumulating profound data assets and ensuring the
accuracy and effectiveness of the data. After data
governance and mining, more than 7,000 types of
data tags have been formed, and the cumulative
number of characteristic parameters directly involved
in calculations exceeds 200 million. Thirdly, the self-
developed data intelligent operating system (DiOS) is
used to process and govern the data, realizing the
collection of data, asset management, and integrated
application management. The generated data
products will be regularly iterated and optimized
(SAIF, 2024).
There are two types of application scenarios:
Firstly, the company utilizes data resources to provide
professional push solutions for mobile application
developers, including services such as message push
SDK and user operation platform SDK. Secondly,
relying on data resources, the company has developed
data intelligence applications for different industries,
such as intelligent transportation, medical and health
care, etc., and also provides data support for brand
marketing, public governance, etc. In addition, the
company is actively exploring the combination of
data resources with new technologies such as
artificial intelligence. For example, it has accessed
large models like ChatGPT and developed
applications of large models for vertical scenarios.
2.2 The Business Model of Data
Resources
The company's business logic is divided into three
layers (D-M-P, Data-Machine-People): The bottom
layer "D" refers to data accumulation. Based on the
data accumulated in developer services and in-depth
insights into massive dynamic data, the company
continuously provides data support for top-level
businesses. The middle layer "M" refers to data
governance. The company has created a data
intelligent operating system (DiOS), which can
collect and gather data, manage it as assets, and
conduct refined processing, and then provide the
upper-level business systems with the ability of data
services. The upper layer "P" refers to data
application. Combining data models with industry
understanding, the company has created productized
and large-scale profit-making data intelligent
applications in the fields of commercial services and
public services.