諾基亞何以折戟智能手機市場(上)

Frank Nuovo, the former chief designer at Nokia Corp., NOK +2.37% gave presentations more than a decade ago to wireless carriers and investors that divined the future of the mobile Internet.

十多年前，原諾基亞(Nokia Corp.)首席設計師諾沃(Frank Nuovo)向無線運營商和投資者做報告，猜想移動互聯網的未來。

More than seven years before Apple Inc. AAPL -0.11% rolled out the iPhone, the Nokia team showed a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick. In the late 1990s, Nokia secretly developed another alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen-all features today of the hot-selling Apple iPad.

在蘋果(Apple Inc.)推出iPhone七年多之前，諾基亞團隊就演示了一款擁有彩色觸屏、屏幕下方有一個單獨按鍵的手機。演示中，這款手機能夠定位餐館、玩賽車遊戲，還可以訂購脣膏。20世紀90年代晚期，諾基亞祕密開發出另一款誘人的產品。那是一款平板電腦，有無線連接功能，配備了觸摸屏，這些都是蘋果熱銷產品iPad今天擁有的特色與功能。

'Oh my God,' Mr. Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. 'We had it completely nailed.'

諾沃一邊瀏覽着他昔日的幻燈片，一邊說：天哪，我們完全抓住了要害。

Consumers never saw either device. The gadgets were casualties of a corporate culture that lavished funds on research but squandered opportunities to bring the innovations it produced to market.

消費者從未看到這兩款產品。諾基亞斥巨資用於研發，卻浪費了把創新引入市場的機會。上述兩款產品正是這種企業文化的犧牲品。

Nokia led the wireless revolution in the 1990s and set its sights on ushering the world into the era of smartphones. Now that the smartphone era has arrived, the company is racing to roll out competitive products as its stock price collapses and thousands of employees lose their jobs.

諾基亞在90年代引領了無線革命，並下定決心要把世界帶進智能手機時代。現在智能手機時代已經到來，諾基亞卻還在爲推出有競爭力的產品而忙得不亦樂乎，而此時該公司的股價已大幅下跌，成千上萬的員工丟掉了飯碗。

This year, Nokia ended a 14-year-run as the world's largest maker of mobile phones, as rival Samsung Electronics Co. -1.20% took the top spot and makers of cheaper phones ate into Nokia's sales volumes. Nokia's share of mobile phone sales fell to 21% in the first quarter from 27% a year earlier, according to market data from IDC. Its share peaked at 40.4% at the end of 2007.

今年諾基亞結束了連續14年成爲世界最大手機生產商的歷史。競爭對手三星電子(Samsung Electronics Co.)搶過頭把交椅，生產更廉價手機的公司也在分食諾基亞的市場。IDC提供的市場數據顯示，一季度諾基亞在手機市場的份額已經從去年同期的27%下降到21%。其最高份額是在2007年第四季度，當時達到了40.4%。

The impact was evident in Nokia's financial report for the first three months of the year. It swung to a loss of 929 million, or $1.1 billion, from a profit of 344 million a year earlier. It had revenue of 7.4 billion, down 29%, and it sold 82.7 million phones, down 24%. Nokia reports its second-quarter results Thursday and has already said losses in its mobile phone business will be worse than expected. Its shares currently trade at 1.37 a share, down 64% so far this year.

份額下降的影響明顯體現在諾基亞一季度的財務報表裏。財報顯示諾基亞從去年一季度盈利3.44億歐元變爲虧損9.29億歐元（合11億美元）。收入爲74億歐元，下降29%；手機銷量爲8,270萬部，下降24%。諾基亞週四發佈第二季度財報，而且還表示手機業務的虧損可能比預期更大。目前諾基亞股價爲1.37歐元，年初迄今下降了64%。

Nokia is losing ground despite spending $40 billion on research and development over the past decade-nearly four times what Apple spent in the same period. And Nokia clearly saw where the industry it dominated was heading. But its research effort was fragmented by internal rivalries and disconnected from the operations that actually brought phones to market.

儘管過去10年該公司投資400億美元用於研發──這一數額接近蘋果同一時期研發投入的四倍，諾基亞仍然在市場上節節敗退。而且諾基亞明顯是看到了它所主導的行業的發展方向。然而，研發工作因爲內部不和而碎片化，並且跟生產銷售手機的實際運營活動脫節。

Instead of producing hit devices or software, the binge of spending has left the company with at least two abandoned operating systems and a pile of patents that analysts now say are worth around $6 billion, the bulk of the value of the entire company. Chief Executive Stephen Elop plans to start selling more of that family silver to keep the company going until it can turn around its fortunes.

大規模的投入並沒有帶來大受歡迎的終端或軟件，而是給諾基亞留下了至少兩款被拋棄的操作系統和一大堆專利。據分析師現在估計，這些專利的價值在60億美元左右，構成了整個公司價值的主要部分。首席執行長埃洛普(Stephen Elop)準備從這些“傳家寶”裏面拿出更多東西賣掉，讓公司支撐到能夠扭轉自身命運的時刻。

'If only they had been landed in products,' Mr. Elop said of the company's inventions in a recent interview, 'I think Nokia would have been in a different place.'

埃洛普在最近接受的一次採訪中說，要是諾基亞的創新當初落實在產品上面，諾基亞就不是現在這個樣子了。

Nokia isn't the only company to lose its way in the treacherous cellphone market. Research In Motion Ltd. RIMM +0.43% had a dominant position thanks to its BlackBerry email device, but it hasn't been able to come up with a solution to the iPhone either.

在危機四伏的手機市場迷失方向的公司不只諾基亞一家。Research In Motion Ltd.（簡稱RIM）曾因電子郵件終端黑莓(BlackBerry)而佔據霸主地位，但它也沒有能夠拿出一款與iPhone一較高下的產品。

As a result, the company has lost about 90% of its market value in the past five years, and its CEO is trying to convince investors the company isn't in a 'death spiral.'

受此影響，RIM的市值在過去五年縮水約90%，其CEO正在努力讓投資者相信該公司並沒有陷入“死亡螺旋”。

Whereas RIM lacked the right product, Nokia actually developed the sorts of devices that consumers are gobbling up today. It just didn't bring them to market. In a strategic blunder, it shifted its focus from smartphones back to basic phones right as the iPhone upended the market.

RIM的問題是缺乏合適的產品，而諾基亞實際上是開發出了今天消費者瘋狂搶購的幾類終端，只是沒有把這些終端引入市場。就在iPhone顛覆市場的時候，諾基亞把重心從智能手機移回到基本款手機上面，犯下了戰略錯誤。

'I was heartbroken when Apple got the jump on this concept,' says Mr. Nuovo, Nokia's former chief designer. 'When people say the iPhone as a concept, a piece of hardware, is unique, that upsets me.'

原諾基亞首席設計師諾沃說，蘋果在這一概念上佔得先機時，我感覺非常心痛；每當別人說iPhone作爲一個概念和一款硬件產品是獨一無二的，我都感到難過。

Mr. Elop, a Canadian who took over as Nokia's first non-Finnish chief executive in 2010, is now trying to refocus a company that he says grew complacent because of its market dominance.

加拿大人埃洛普在2010年成爲諾基亞首位非芬蘭籍的首席執行長，現在他正努力調整公司的戰略重心。他說，諾基亞過去因爲它在市場的主導地位而變得自滿了。

Shortly after taking the job, Mr. Elop scrapped work on Nokia's homegrown smartphone software and said the company would use Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT +2.66% Windows mobile operating system. By doing so, he was able to deliver a new line of phones to compete with the iPhone in less than a year, much quicker than if Nokia had stuck with its own software, he says.

埃洛普上任不久後，就停止了諾基亞自有智能手機軟件的研發，他說該公司將使用微軟(Microsoft Corp.)的Windows移動操作系統。埃洛普說，這樣他就能夠在不足一年之內推出一個新的手機系列與iPhone競爭，比諾基亞堅持使用自己的軟件推出產品的速度要快得多。

Those phones aren't selling strongly. The company hasn't broken out numbers but said in April that initial sales were 'mixed,' and two months later said competition had been tougher than expected. Mr. Elop was forced in mid-June to announce another 10,000 layoffs and $1.7 billion in cost cuts that will fall heavily on research and development. On Sunday, Nokia cut the U.S. price of the phones in half, to $50.

諾基亞推出的Windows手機銷售情況並不好。該公司尚未公佈銷售數據，但今年4月曾說初期銷售情況喜憂參半，兩個月後又說競爭比他們預期的更激烈。埃洛普被迫在6月中旬宣佈諾基亞再裁員1萬人並削減成本17億美元，裁員和成本削減主要將針對研發部門。週日，諾基亞將在美國銷售的Windows手機降價一半，至50美元。

Nokia has a long history of successfully adapting to big market shifts. The company started out in 1865 as a lumber mill. Over the years, it diversified into electricity production and rubber products.

諾基亞長期以來一直能夠成功適應巨大的市場變化。該公司創立於1865年，最初是一家木材廠，後來逐漸將業務多樣化，進入發電和塑料產品領域。

At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union's collapse and recession in Europe caused demand for Nokia's diverse slate of products to dry up, leaving the company in crisis. Jorma Ollila, a former Citibank banker, took over as CEO in 1992 and focused Nokia on cellphones.

上世紀80年代末，蘇聯的解體和歐洲的衰退造成諾基亞各類產品的需求大幅下滑，公司陷入危機。1992年，曾爲花旗銀行(Citibank)銀行家的奧利拉(Jorma Ollila)接任首席執行長一職，將諾基亞的業務重點放到手機上。

Nokia factories eventually sprang up from Germany to China, part of a logistics machine so well-oiled that Nokia could feed the world's demand for cellphones faster than any other manufacturer in the world. Profits soared, and the company's share price followed, giving Nokia a market value of 303 billion at its peak in 2000.

諾基亞的工廠最終出現在從德國到中國的諸多國家，諾基亞的物流環節運轉得非常順暢，以致於它能夠比世界上任何其他製造商都更快地滿足全球消費者的手機需求。諾基亞的利潤大幅上升，該公司股價也隨之飆升，2000年諾基亞的市值最高曾達到3,030億歐元。

Mr. Ollila and other top executives became stars in Finland, often requesting private dining rooms when they went out to eat, senior executives said.

高管們說，奧利拉和其他高層管理人員在芬蘭成了明星，他們出去用餐時常常要用包間。

Early on, the CEO started laying the groundwork for the company's next reinvention. Nokia executives predicted that the business of producing cellphones that do little but make calls would lose its profitability by 2000. So the company started spending billions of dollars to research mobile email, touch screens and faster wireless networks.

早在當年，奧利拉即開始爲諾基亞的下一階段改造打下基礎。諾基亞的高管們曾預測，2000年前，生產僅具有電話功能的手機將難以繼續盈利。於是，諾基亞開始斥資數十億美元研發手機電子郵件、觸控屏和更快速的無線網絡。

In 1996, the company unveiled its first smartphone, the Nokia 9000, and called it the first mobile device that could email, fax and surf the Web. It weighed slightly under a pound.

1996年，該公司發佈了其首款智能手機“諾基亞9000”，並稱它是首款能夠收發電子郵件、發傳真和上網的手機。這款手機重量略低於一磅。

'We had exactly the right view of what it was all about,' says Mr. Ollila, who stepped down as chief executive in 2006 and retired as chairman in May. 'We were about five years ahead.'

奧利拉說，我們對手機行業的發展曾有着準確的預見。2006年，他辭去首席執行長一職，今年5月辭去了董事長一職。他說，我們的眼光超前了約五年。

The phone, also called the Communicator, made an appearance in the movie 'The Saint' and drew a dedicated following among certain business users, but never commanded a mass audience.

“諾基亞9000”又被稱爲“Communicator”，曾在影片《聖人》(The Saint)中亮過相，在某些企業用戶中獲得了很大的關注，但從未征服過普通大衆。