科技資訊:阿里巴巴下一步走向何方

When the thin man in the silver-coloured windbreaker walks on to the stage, a roar goes through the crowd. Then he starts singing: “Friends, we have walked together all our lives, but those days are over,” and the audience goes crazy.

那個身穿銀色風衣的瘦削男子走上舞臺時，人羣發出一陣轟鳴。接着，這個男子開始演唱：“朋友一生一起走，那些日子不再有，”觀衆的興奮情緒達到極點。

But this is not a pop concert. The 40,000 people in the Yellow Dragon Stadium in Hangzhou on Friday night were Alibaba Group employees and their family, and the man on stage was Jack Ma, saying farewell to the business he founded that has now grown into one of the world’s largest ecommerce companies.

但是，這並不是一場流行音樂會。上週五晚聚集在杭州黃龍體育館的這4萬人，是阿里巴巴集團(Alibaba Group)的僱員及其家人，而臺上那人是正在告別該集團的馬雲(Jack Ma)，他創立的這家企業已發展壯大，成爲全球最大電子商務公司之一。

At 48, Mr Ma has handed the job of chief executive to Jonathan Lu, his trusted lieutenant and 13-year Alibaba veteran, and gone into semi-retirement as executive chairman.

現年48歲的馬雲將首席執行官的職位交給自己的親信、爲阿里巴巴效力13年的公司元老陸兆禧(Jonathan Lu)，自己繼續擔任執行董事長，由此進入半退休狀態。

The change at the top comes as the group is preparing what could become one of the largest-ever internet initial public offerings. A listing in the US, expected at the end of this year or in early 2014, would allow Alibaba to buy back up to half of Yahoo’s 24 per cent stake in itself and raise $60bn or more from public investors.

高層換人之際，阿里巴巴集團正準備進行首次公開發行(IPO)，這可能成爲史上規模最大的互聯網企業IPO之一。預計該集團將在今年底或2014年初在美國上市，使其能夠購回雅虎(Yahoo)所持其24%股份的至多一半，並從公開市場投資者那裏募資至少600億美元。

Mr Lu inherits a formidable business. Alibaba operates the world’s largest online marketplace for trade between companies. It has also built an unrivalled online retail platform in China. , the group’s eBay-like consumer-to-consumer website, accounts for 90 per cent of China’s online retail transaction value in this segment.

陸兆禧繼承了一家令人敬畏的企業。阿里巴巴集團運營着世界上最大的企業對企業(B2B)在線交易市場。它還打造了中國首屈一指的在線零售平臺。淘寶網()是阿里巴巴集團旗下類似於eBay的消費者對消費者(C2C)網站，在該板塊佔有中國在線零售交易價值的90%。

TMall, its business-to-consumer platform, accounts for half of online business-to-consumer sales in China by transaction value, according to McKinsey.

麥肯錫(McKinsey)數據顯示，阿里巴巴集團旗下的企業對消費者(B2C)平臺天貓(TMall)，按交易價值計算佔中國在線B2C銷售的一半。

“The market share concentration and power they have is unique – you don’t have that in any other market in the world,” says Zia Daniell Wigder, an ecommerce analyst at Forrester Research in New York.

“他們擁有的市場份額集中度和實力是獨一無二的——你在世界上其他任何市場找不到這樣的例子，”紐約Forrester Research電子商務分析師齊婭•丹尼爾•維傑(Zia Daniell Wigder)表示。

That market power was reflected in Alibaba’s most recent results. Revenues rose by 80 per cent year on year to $1.84bn in the final quarter of 2012, and net profit surged by 156 per cent to $650m, according to a Yahoo filing last week.

這種市場實力反映在阿里巴巴集團的最新業績上。雅虎最近提交的監管申報文件顯示，2012年末季阿里巴巴集團營收同比增長80%，至18.4億美元，淨利潤同比飆升156%，至6.50億美元。

But the big question is where Alibaba can go from here.

但是，真正的問題在於阿里巴巴下一步能走向何方。

Other players are challenging its dominant position in its home market. They include 360buy, which accounted for almost a fifth of China’s online retail transaction value in 2012 according to iResearch, and Suning, an electronics retailer with a massive bricks-and-mortar presence that is now aggressively expanding online and branching out into other products.

在本土市場，競爭對手正在叫板該集團的霸主地位。這些競爭對手包括京東商城(360buy)——艾瑞諮詢(iResearch)的數據顯示，2012年京東佔有中國在線零售交易價值的近五分之一；另外還有蘇寧(Suning)——擁有龐大實體店網絡的電子產品零售商，目前正積極向網上業務拓展，並涉足其他產品的銷售。

Although Alibaba dismisses the idea that it is under threat, it is looking far ahead to defend its turf. The company has launched its own mobile operating system to build a closer relationship with consumers, as they start shopping increasingly on mobile devices.

雖然阿里巴巴集團否認自己面臨威脅，但該集團爲了守住自己的地盤正把目光投向未來。它已推出自己的移動操作系統，以求與消費者打造更緊密的關係。目前中國消費者日趨使用移動設備購物。

Taking a page out of Amazon’s playbook, Alibaba is also rapidly expanding its cloud computing business.

阿里巴巴集團借鑑亞馬遜(Amazon)的戰略，也在快速擴張其雲計算業務。

By the end of this year, the company expects half of the bandwidth used for its cloud operations to be serving outside customers, according to Wang Jian, head of the unit. “Eventually, our target is to have 5 per cent of all computing power in China by the number of servers shipped,” he says.

據阿里雲計算總裁王堅介紹，該公司預計，到今年底，其雲計算業務所用帶寬的一半將是爲外部客戶服務。他表示：“最終，我們的目標是按照發運的服務器數量計，擁有中國全部計算能力的5%。”

Alibaba is also on the acquisition path. On Friday, it agreed to acquire a 28 per cent stake in Autonavi, the company behind China’s most successful mobile map app. Through the investment, Alibaba hopes to expand its mobile commerce capabilities, for example to be able to show the physical location of vendors on Juhuasuan, its Groupon-like daily deals site, or Taobao, the consumer-to-consumer platform.

阿里巴巴集團還踏上了收購的道路。上週五，該集團同意收購高德(Autonavi) 28%股份，後者是中國最成功的移動地圖應用的開發商。阿里巴巴集團希望藉助這項投資擴大自己的移動商務能力，例如顯示集團旗下類Groupon團購網站“聚划算”或C2C平臺淘寶網上商家的實際地理位置。

Only 10 days earlier, Alibaba agreed to buy an 18 per cent stake in Sina Weibo, China’s largest Twitter equivalent. The tie-up will allow Alibaba to make the ads that are a major source of its revenue much more targeted.

最近，阿里巴巴集團還同意收購中國最大微博網站新浪微博(Sina Weibo) 18%股份。這一結盟將使該集團得以大幅提高廣告的針對性；廣告是該集團的一大營收來源。

Alibaba executives say a few more deals like this are to come, as the company continues to build an ecosystem around ecommerce. “We are acquiring the capabilities to provide and crunch the data needed for that,” says Mr Wang. “The traditional economy was centred on industry, powered by electricity. In the new economy, we will provide the equivalent to electricity.”

阿里巴巴集團高管表示，隨着集團繼續圍繞電子商務打造一個生態系統，未來還會有幾筆類似的交易。“爲此，我們正在獲取必要的數據提供與處理能力。”王堅表示，“傳統經濟以工業爲核心，由電力驅動。在新經濟中，我們將提供等同於電力的東西。”

But what unsettles outsiders more is the question whether Alibaba will take its ecommerce machine global. In 2004, just a year after its establishment, Taobao had already surpassed eBay in China – a development that eventually ruined the US company’s retail business in that market.

但是，令外界更加不安的問題是，阿里巴巴集團會否讓自己的電子商務機器走向全球？2004年，開通僅一年的淘寶網就已超越了eBay的在華業務——這一發展最終毀掉了eBay這家美國公司在中國市場的零售業務。

“The question is whether [Alibaba] will be able to replicate their success outside China,” says Ms Wigder.

“問題在於，（阿里巴巴集團）能不能在中國以外複製自己的成功，”維傑表示。

The industry is alight with speculation that Alibaba could launch an attack on global rivals such as eBay and Amazon, by helping Chinese sellers ship fast, and cheaply, to developed markets. Industry executives and analysts say Alibaba is considering investment in “offshore” warehouses outside of Europe and the US to make this happen.

業內有很多猜測稱，阿里巴巴集團可能會向全球競爭對手eBay和亞馬遜發起攻擊，幫助中國賣家快速而廉價地向發達市場發貨。業內高管和分析師稱，阿里巴巴集團正考慮向歐美以外的“離岸”倉庫投資，使其成爲現實。

John Spelich, Alibaba spokesman, says he has not heard of such plans.

阿里巴巴集團發言人約翰•斯佩裏奇(John Spelich)表示，他尚未聽說有此類計劃。

But Wang Tingting, an analyst at iResearch, says the company “will definitely make that move eventually”. Shi Tao, a vice-president at Alibaba’s rival 360buy, which recently started an international business, says that keeping products in bulk in “offshore” warehouses and shipping them into developed markets piecemeal can lower costs, since lower import duties apply to shipments under ∈20 apiece.

但艾瑞諮詢分析師王婷婷表示，該集團“最終肯定會做出此舉”。競爭對手京東最近啓動了一項國際業務。京東副總裁石濤表示，把產品成批地儲存於“離岸”倉庫，然後零零碎碎地發往發達市場，能夠降低成本，因爲不到20歐元的包裹所適用的進口關稅更低。

No matter if Alibaba eventually moves in this direction, the company has started globalisation plans. Last year, it set up a dedicated team to explore taking Taobao global. “At the moment, we focus on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia,” says Daphne Lee, head of Taobao International. She says the company is taking things step by step and is now trying to forge logistics and payment partnerships.

無論阿里巴巴集團最終是否走上這條道路，該集團都已啓動全球化計劃。去年它成立了一個專職團隊，由其探索讓淘寶網全球化的可能性。“目前我們聚焦於香港、臺灣、新加坡和馬來西亞，”淘寶國際(Taobao International)業務主管李芃君(Daphne Lee)說。她表示，公司正在步步爲營地推進，目前在試圖打造物流和支付方面的合作伙伴關係。

The demand is clearly there – 280,000 users from Singapore alone registered on Taobao last year, although demand can often present surprises. Consumers from tropical Singapore “are buying down jackets – they need them for overseas trips and can barely find them at home”, says Ms Lee.

需求顯然是存在的——去年僅新加坡一個地方就有28萬用戶在淘寶網註冊——儘管需求常常會出人意料。據李芃君介紹，地處熱帶的新加坡的消費者熱衷“購買羽絨服——他們需要在出國旅行時穿這種衣服，而在國內市場根本找不到”。