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Japanese electronics firms
日本电子企业
Eclipsed by Apple
苹果，你挡住了我的阳光
Electronics companies in Japan are starting to turn themselves around, but they are a shadow of their former selves
日本的电子公司的处境已经开始得到改善，但还是被旧模式所束缚
FOR Sony it was a bittersweet moment. On July 1st the firm bid a final farewell to its Vaio personal computers, a global brand which won such a devoted following after its launch in 1996 that the late Steve Jobs, a fan of Sony in its glory days, once asked to equip it with his Apple Mac operating system. Cut off from its parent, Vaio is floundering. Since Sony announced its sale to a Japanese private-equity fund, in February, it has suffered a slump in its market share in Japan to just 2%, down from 10% at the start of 2014.
对于索尼来说，这可谓是百味陈杂的一刻。7月1日，索尼正式告别它旗下的VAIO电脑。VAIO在1996年上市以来就广受欢迎，当年索尼的铁杆粉丝乔布斯曾经希望在VAIO上安装苹果的运行系统。如今独立经营的VAID正在苦苦挣扎：自从今年二月份索尼宣布将它出售给一家日本的私募基金后，它的市场份额从年初的10%暴跌至硕果仅存的2%。
The vertiginous drop will have dismayed Sony, which had kept a tiny stake in the business. However, investors have put Sony's bosses under pressure to do something about the company's chronically poor performance. It has lost money in five of the past six years and is forecasting a further loss in the year to March 2015.
由于索尼在此业务中仍持有少量股份，这种暴跌的确教人头疼。不过，投资者们已经开始督促索尼的高官们对该公司的长期疲软有所作为。在过去六年中就有长达五年的亏损，这样的情形预计还会持续到2015年三月。
Vaio is the most significant business Sony has quit in recent times. Cutting it adrift may be the start of a far-reaching reorganisation. On the same day the firm shifted its loss-making televisions arm, once the core of its profits and brand image, into a separate legal entity. For now, Sony's chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, rules out an outright sale, and many people criticise him for not acting more drastically. Yet the firm admits that an alliance with another television-maker could be an option.
VAID应当是近年来索尼所放弃的最为重要的业务了。这种放弃可能是长期机构调整的开始。就在同一天，索尼把曾经带来主要利润和品牌形象，最近却亏损连连的电视机业务转变成了独立的法人。目前，索尼公司的首席执行官平井一夫决定不采取直接出售的做法，因此而受到了行动不够彻底的批评。不过，索尼也承认还可能和其他电视制造商结成联盟。
After years of denial that surgery was needed, optimism is rising that Japan's consumer-electronics firms are facing up to their steady loss of global market share (see chart 1). In 1982 we published a briefing on how “The giants in Japanese electronics” were set to keep conquering the world with all manner of exciting new gadgets: Video cameras! Fax machines! CD players! And they did, for a while. But now they all struggle to compete in the most important categories of consumer electronics against rivals such as Samsung of South Korea and especially Apple of the United States.
在多年的讳疾忌医之后，越来越多的人们认为日本的消费电子公司终于开始面对它们全球市场份额日渐萎靡的现实。在1982年，我们曾经发表了一份简讯，说的是“日本电子巨头”将如何通过它们的全新电子工具来征服世界：摄像机！传真机！CD播放机！它们确实做到了，不过这成为历史。目前在重要的电子消费品方面，南韩的三星和美国的苹果势头强劲，日本公司的对抗之路走得艰难。
Even at home in Japan's thriving consumer-electronics market—only Americans have more devices per person than the tech-obsessed Japanese—former champions, including Hitachi, Panasonic and Sharp as well as Sony, have lost much ground. Local firms have largely ceded the PC market, and they are losing out quickly in mobile phones. They never really made their mark in smartphones, today's most-desired gadgets. Sony's Trinitron TVs and Walkmans once helped build a fearsomely large Japanese trade surplus, but nowadays the country suffers a deficit, and foreign smartphones account for about a fifth of it.
日本人痴迷技术产品，人均电子设备持有量紧随美国，居世界第二。但即使是在日本，过去那些电子消费品市场的领头羊—包括日立，松下和夏普以及索尼，都风光不再。日本本土公司已经基本放弃了电脑市场，而在手机方面也形势不妙。在当今最受欢迎的智能手机方面，它们表现平平。索尼的Trinitron电视和随身听曾经为日本实现了令人羡妒的贸易顺差，可如今日本却赤字不断，而来自日本的智能手机大概造成赤字的五分之一。
One consolation is that consumer electronics is an impossible business for nearly all firms, says Eiichi Katayama of Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Tokyo, so competitive has it become. A strong brand is no longer enough to justify a sharply higher price. This week Samsung said its operating profits were down, for a third quarter in a row, in the three months to June, as it was pressed from below by cut-price rivals like Xiaomi, a three-year-old upstart from China, and squeezed from above by Apple.
东京美国美林银行的片山荣一称，电子消费品领域竞争激烈，几乎对所有的公司来说都是极为难做的业务，这对日本公司来说算是小小的宽慰。要想设立高价，只有优秀的品牌已经远远不够了。本周三星透露自己的营销利润在四到六月期间持续走低，而这样的低迷状态已经持续了三个季度—原因在于手机的高低端市场分别被苹果和小米机占据。
That said, the Japanese firms have blundered for the past decade. They continued to obsess about fancy hardware, neglecting fast-growing software and services (such as Apple's iTunes) and failing to spot consumers' changing tastes. They were slow to recognise the developing world as a fast-growing market and not just a low-cost manufacturing base, says Peter Kenevan, a consultant at McKinsey in Tokyo.
话虽如此，日本企业在过去十年的处境都颇为艰难，源于它们过分沉迷于花哨的硬件，却忽视了飞速成长的软件和服务领域，也没能及时发现消费者悄然变化的喜好。麦肯锡东京分部的顾问皮特·科内宛称，这些企业一向把发展中国家当做低成本的制造基地，对于这些快速增长的市场的巨大潜力却反应迟钝。
The Japanese firms now have some hard decisions to make, about which existing products they should give up on and which new ones to pursue. Sony's bosses are reportedly studying reforms made by Philips, a Dutch firm which has quit a number of poorly performing businesses. Last year it got out of making televisions, and a chunk of its lighting division is next out of the door.
日本众企业现在需要痛定思痛，辨别哪些现存产品应当毅然地放弃，哪些新产品又应当不舍地追求。据说索尼的高官们现在正在向荷兰公司飞利浦的一系列变革学习—该公司目前已经放弃了几项表现不佳的业务：去年停止了电视机的生产，接下来要精简的就是一系列照明业务了。
Panasonic is already making an abrupt change of direction. Under Kazuhiro Tsuga, its newish chief executive, it is exiting both plasma televisions and consumer smartphones. Its new focus is on making equipment for energy-efficient homes. Car parts, including battery cells for electric and hybrid vehicles, are another strong area of growth. Mr Tsuga is also seeking ways to serve emerging Asian markets better. He recently shocked his fellow managers by saying Panasonic would set up a product-development headquarters in India, staffed chiefly by locals.
松下已经做出了大幅度的政策调整。在新上任的首席执行官铁杉和弘的带领下，松下正在淡出等离子电视和消费者智能手机领域，转而聚焦于节能住宅设备制造。此外汽车零件也是成长势头猛烈的领域之一，其中包括用于电动和混合动力汽车的电池。和弘先生同时也在探索如何更好的服务欣欣向荣的亚洲市场。最近，和弘先生就声称有意在主要聘用当地人的印度建立松下的产品发展总部。此番言论在高管中激起了不小的波澜。
Other firms, such as Toshiba and Hitachi, which were already less reliant on consumer electronics, are paying new attention to their heavy industrial businesses. All these moves should help solve a common structural problem in Japanese industry, which is that too many firms all make similar products. Some electronics giants are moving into a surprising new field: high-tech farming. Fujitsu, Hitachi, Panasonic and Sharp are converting disused factory space and opening high-tech greenhouses to grow vegetables, which are expensive in Japan.
其他对于消费者电器依赖较少的日企，例如东芝和日立，则开始更多的关注它们的重工业业务。这些变动将有利于改善日本工业普遍存在的结构性问题，那就是企业的产品相似度太高。还有一些电子巨头则开始挺进全新的领域：高科技农业。富士通，日立，松下和夏普都在把废弃不用的工厂改造成为高科技温室，以种植在日本卖价颇高的蔬菜。
The financial results of the changes have started to emerge. Aided also by a recent fall in the value of the yen, Fujitsu, Panasonic and Sharp all returned to profit in 2013. The other big electronics firms all improved their bottom lines, with the exceptions of Sony and NEC. Sony promises that 2015-16 will be the year in which it returns to profit. Its smartphones and tablets are at last gaining some traction, with the help of one simple, customer-centred innovation—making them waterproof. It will take little short of a miracle for it to make up the ground lost to Apple but such hints that the worst may soon be over have helped Sony, so far, to fend off calls by Daniel Loeb, an American activist investor, for a radical break-up of the company.
这些改变已经在经济上面初见成效。在日元贬值的天时地利之际，富士通、松下和夏普都在2013年重新盈利。除了索尼和NEC以外的大型电子公司也都有所进步。索尼承诺自己将会在2015-16开始盈利。现在索尼的智能手机和平板电脑越来越受欢迎，这还要归功于一项简单而颇有人情味的创新—防水设计。当然，要想从苹果手里收复失地可谓天方夜谭；不过，这些转机还是能够暂时帮助索尼抵御丹尼尔·勒布要求分化该公司的激烈言论。此人是一位来自美国的激进投资者。
Seeking a path to growth
寻求成长道路
For the foreseeable future, Panasonic, Sharp and Sony will continue to rely on consumer electronics for much of their sales and profits. Although Mr Tsuga has done a lot of restructuring and redirection at Panasonic, say executives in the industry, he has not yet found a reliable path towards growth. Films, music, television and financial services are solid businesses for Sony, but consumer electronics still accounts for 60% of its revenues.
在可预见的未来，松下、夏普和索尼还是会继续依赖消费者电子产品来拉动销售额和利润。业内管理人士称，尽管松下的和弘先生已经在结构和策略上做出了不小的调整，他依旧还未找到一条持续成长的道路；尽管索尼的主要业务涵盖电影，音乐，电视，以及金融服务，消费者电子依旧占据销售量的六成。
If their chief executives were visionary leaders willing to take risks, Japanese electronics firms could do much to regain their lost lustre, says Roderick Lappin, who heads the Japanese operations of China's fast-rising Lenovo. Their unrivalled engineering, though often in excess of customers' needs, is still an advantage, he says. They sit on a trove of intellectual property in the form of patents. Much of this could prove invaluable in the field of “wearable” technology or in the much-hyped “internet of things”, in which appliances, equipment and even pets may in future be wirelessly web-connected.
罗德克·拉宾是中国新兴品牌联想在日本业务的负责人。他认为，只要这些日企的执行者们富有远见，甘愿冒险，回复往日荣耀不在话下。日本人的工程技术高超，虽然与客户的需求相比可能过犹不及，其数一数二的地位依旧是一项竞争优势。日本人拥有大量受专利保护的知识产权，这些在“可消耗”技术和炒的火热的“物联网”领域都非常宝贵。“物联网”可能在将来能把电器、设备甚至宠物通过无线网络连接起来。
However, the Japanese firms will find themselves hindered by their old-fashioned corporate cultures. With a few exceptions such as Mr Tsuga, Japanese bosses, with an average age of 60, are extremely cautious. Years of losses and restructuring make it still harder for them to place bold bets on future technologies.
可惜的是，日本企业受其传统企业文化掣肘不小。日企老板的平均年龄高达花甲，行事谨小慎微—和弘先生算是为数不多的特例之一。再加上连年亏损和结构调整，让这些老板们放手投资未来高科技可谓难上加难。
In particular, they are still too attached to Japan's culture of lifetime employment. At most large Japanese firms, around a third of permanent staff are surplus to requirements, yet cannot be fired due to the country's unclear labour rules.
最为突出的是，老板们依旧非常留恋日本文化特有的终身聘用制度。在大多数日本公司里面，大概三分之一的正式员工都是多余的，可是由于日本劳动法暧昧不轻，裁员基本没有可能。
There is some hope that Shinzo Abe's reforming government may take steps to make the labour market more flexible, which would help electronics more than any other industry. Had lay-offs been easier, Panasonic, Sony and others would have had far greater financial flexibility to cope with changing market conditions. Instead, their limited voluntary severance packages, typically offering two to three years' pay, are cripplingly expensive. Those who accept them are often the most talented.
安倍晋三的政府改革有望使劳动市场变得更为灵活，而电子产业将是其中最大的受益者。如果裁员能变得更容易的话，松下、索尼和其他公司都能从财务方面更好的适应千变万化的市场。现实情况却是，对企业来说，数量有限的资源遣散费（通常提供两至三年的工资）变得越来越昂贵，而愿意接受这些遣散费离职的往往还是企业中最有才华的员工。
Since the firms are no longer run by their high-powered founders but by employees who rose through the same lifetime system, says Hidemi Moue, boss of Japan Industrial Partners, the private-equity buyer of Vaio, there is too little willingness to tackle these problems. In all, it will take a lot more than a few whizzy new gadgets to fix the Japanese electronics firms.
接手VAIO的私募企业是日本产业合作伙伴。它的老板秀美马上称，由于这些日企的运营者已不再是那些效率奇高的创始人，而是跟企业共同成长起来的员工，所以解决这方面问题的决心自然而然就比较小了。总而言之，日本电子企业的问题可不是发明几个新式电子小工具就能解决的。
