新款黑莓手機造型曝光 正方形的智能手機

BlackBerry may be on the ropes, but the company hasn’t lost the will to fight.

黑莓（BlackBerry）或許已經到了搖搖欲墜的地步，但還沒有喪失鬥志。

Next month, the company is expected to release the Passport, a new model of smartphone that fuses the company’s signature QWERTY keyboard, slimmed to three rows and strictly alphabetical, with an unusual 4.5-inch square display. The device has been called a “phablet,” the term for a tablet-like smartphone, though it is comparatively squat. It’s best suited for the inside pocket of a jacket.

下個月，黑莓公司將推出一款叫做Passport的新機型，它依然搭載了黑莓標誌性的QWERTY全鍵盤，但是鍵盤只有三排按鍵，也就是隻有字母部分。另外它還搭載了一塊罕見的4.5英寸正方型顯示屏。有人也把Passport稱作一款“平板手機”——儘管它的體型相比之下更像個“矮胖子”。它最適合放在人們的夾克內側口袋裏。

It's the point. The Waterloo, Canada-based companyhopes that its device will be used by the enterprise customers it lost in recent years as it failed to keep pace with rivals like Apple and Google. BlackBerry hopes that government, finance, and health care workers find the device’s unorthodox dimensions ideal for their work.

這正是黑莓想達到的效果。近年來，由於在與蘋果（Apple）和谷歌（Google）的競爭中敗下陣來，黑莓已經失去了很多企業顧客，急需通過Passport來扳回一城。黑莓希望政府機關、金融行業和醫療衛生行業的工作人員能覺得Passport“不走尋常路”的三圍恰好適合他們的工作。

“It’s great to see BlackBerry step outside of its comfort zone and forge its own path in terms of design,” says Ramon Llamas, an analyst for the market research firm IDC. “Passport won’t get confused with previous BlackBerry models like the Bold and Q10, and the large screen keeps BlackBerry in pace with the competition.”

市場調研機構IDC公司的分析師拉門o拉馬斯表示：“很高興看到黑莓沒有繼續抱殘守缺，而是在設計上走出了自己的路。你絕對不會把Passport與黑莓之前的Bold、Q10等機型混淆了，而且它的大屏也有助於黑莓與其他競爭對手保持一致。”

Keeping pace may not be enough. For the second quarter of 2014, BlackBerry’s global market share, as measured by shipments, was a paltry 0.5%, according to IDC estimates, down from its all-time high of 20% five years ago. Still, strong single digits may be enough to convince shareholders that the company is making the right decisions.

僅僅是追上競爭對手還不夠。據IDC估算，2014年第二季度，黑莓的全球市場份額（根據出貨量來計算）僅有0.5%。而短短五年前，黑莓的全球份額最高時曾達到20%。不過如果黑莓的份額能保持穩健的個位數，也足以讓股東相信，公司正在朝着正確的方向發展。

“By going back to their enterprise client base, CEO John Chen is being realistic with what he can accomplish,” says Wayne Lam, a telecom electronics analyst at IHS. “But unless he can stop enterprise customers from jumping ship and having the BB10 operating system decline into irrelevance, no measure of design innovation can really help him remain viable.”

IHS公司的電信行業分析師韋恩o蘭姆指出：“從黑莓重返企業客戶陣營可以看出，CEO程守宗的目標是很現實的。不過除非他能阻止企業顧客繼續‘棄船’，並且阻止黑莓的BB10平臺繼續被邊緣化，否則不管設計上如何創新，都無助於黑莓的苟延殘喘。”

Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, concurs: “The issue will be the Blackberry 10 software. While well designed, it suffers from a lack of applications and doesn’t have the funding that Microsoft, Apple, and Google have.”

高德納公司（Gartner）的分析師肯o杜拉尼也認爲：“問題的關鍵是黑莓的BB10軟件。雖然它的設計不錯，但它依然存在缺乏應用的問題，另外它也沒有微軟（Microsoft）、蘋果和谷歌那麼多的資金。”

Or the partnerships. In July, Apple and IBM announced a partnership in which IBM would sell Apple’s iPhone and iPad, loaded with IBM applications for data analysis, to business customers. It’s a move that gives Apple serious support in a market where it traditionally has been weak and, it’s no coincidence, where BlackBerry has traditionally been strong.

另外黑莓也缺乏給力的合作伙伴。今年七月，蘋果和IBM達成合作，同意IBM將安裝了自家數據分析軟件的iPhone和iPad銷售給IBM的企業客戶。企業客戶原本是蘋果的軟肋，但與IBM的合作卻使蘋果在這一領域獲得了強勢支持——而企業客戶陣地正是黑莓的傳統“自留地”。

“This move is a huge danger for BlackBerry,” Lam says. “If IBM can help legitimize the use of iPhones and iPads in enterprise, BlackBerry will be left with nowhere else to go.”

蘭姆表示：“此舉對於黑莓來說非常危險。如果在IBM的幫助下，iPhone和iPad在企業裏成了主流，那麼黑莓就再沒有地方可去了。”

BlackBerry’s CEO Chen, who was officially named to the post in November, has never predicated his turnaround strategy on a massive revival of smartphone sales. Instead he worked to turn BlackBerry Messenger, an application that continues to be a point of differentiation for the company thanks to industry-leading security and encryption for wireless text and e-mail communications, into a significant source of revenue by signing licensing deals with Android and Apple.

黑莓現任CEO程守宗去年11月才正式走馬上任，不過他從沒公開表示過黑莓的扭虧爲盈要依賴智能手機銷量的復興。相反，他花了很大精力繼續改善Blackberry Messenger應用。歸功於行業領先的安全性和文字與郵件的無線通訊加密技術，BlackBerry Messenger一直是黑莓引以爲傲的一個差異點。程守宗希望與安卓和蘋果通過簽訂授權交易的方式獲得收入來源。

Further, BlackBerry’s QNX software division—named for the operating system it acquired in 2010—is developing new technologies for the automotive and cloud-services industries. “Chen is opening BlackBerry to more ecosystem partners, which in turn adds value to the BlackBerry solution,” Llamas says.

另外，黑莓的QNX軟件部門（QNX是黑莓於2010年收購的一個操作系統）也在爲汽車行業和雲服務行業開發新技術。拉馬斯表示：“程守宗正在把黑莓開放給更多的生態系統合作伙伴，此舉反過來也會給黑莓的解決方案帶來更多價值。”

But that doesn’t mean Chen wouldn’t like to see BlackBerry smartphones take a new lease on life—especially now that profit margins have been greatly improved by his decision to outsource manufacturing to Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group.

但是這並不意味着程守宗不願看到黑莓智能手機成功“續命”——尤其是公司決定將生產外包給臺灣的富士康科技集團（Foxconn Technology Group）之後，做手機的利潤已經有了很大的提高。

“What BlackBerry needs to do is focus the value proposition they offer to enterprise as well as their renowned security capabilities,” Lam says. “They need to win in offering the better solution to Fortune 500 companies. The hardware innovations are just the icing on the cake.” Still, how sweet it would be.

蘭姆表示：“黑莓需要做的是專注於他們對企業的價值定位，同時繼續專心發展他們著名的安全性能。他們要贏在給‘《財富》500強’企業提供更好的解決方案上。硬件創新只是錦上添花。”當然如果“添”得好也是不錯的。