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,原诺基亚(Nokia Corp.)首席设计师诺沃(Frank Nuovo)向无线运营商和投资者做报告,猜想移动互联网的未来。
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.
在苹果(Apple Inc.)推出iPhone七年多之前,诺基亚团队就演示了一款拥有彩色触屏、屏幕下方有一个单独按键的手机。演示中,这款手机能够定位餐馆、玩赛车游戏,还可以订购唇膏。20世纪90年代晚期,诺基亚秘密开发出另一款诱人的产品。那是一款平板电脑,有无线连接功能,配备了触摸屏,这些都是苹果热销产品iPad今天拥有的特色与功能。
'Oh my God,' Mr. Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. 'We had it completely nailed.'
诺沃一边浏览着他昔日的幻灯片,一边说:天哪,我们完全抓住了要害。
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.
消费者从未看到这两款产品。诺基亚斥巨资用于研发,却浪费了把创新引入市场的机会。上述两款产品正是这种企业文化的牺牲品。
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.
诺基亚在90年代引领了无线革命,并下定决心要把世界带进智能手机时代。现在智能手机时代已经到来,诺基亚却还在为推出有竞争力的产品而忙得不亦乐乎,而此时该公司的股价已大幅下跌,成千上万的员工丢掉了饭碗。
This year, Nokia ended a 14-year-run as the world's largest maker of mobile phones, as rival Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE -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.
今年诺基亚结束了连续14年成为世界最大手机生产商的历史。竞争对手三星电子(Samsung Electronics Co.)抢过头把交椅,生产更廉价手机的公司也在分食诺基亚的市场。IDC提供的市场数据显示,一季度诺基亚在手机市场的份额已经从去年同期的27%下降到21%。其最高份额是在2007年第四季度,当时达到了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.
份额下降的影响明显体现在诺基亚一季度的财务报表里。财报显示诺基亚从去年一季度盈利3.44亿欧元变为亏损9.29亿欧元(合11亿美元)。收入为74亿欧元,下降29%;手机销量为8,270万部,下降24%。诺基亚周四发布第二季度财报,而且还表示手机业务的亏损可能比预期更大。目前诺基亚股价为1.37欧元,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.
尽管过去10年该公司投资400亿美元用于研发──这一数额接近苹果同一时期研发投入的四倍,诺基亚仍然在市场上节节败退。而且诺基亚明显是看到了它所主导的行业的发展方向。然而,研发工作因为内部不和而碎片化,并且跟生产销售手机的实际运营活动脱节。
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.
大规模的投入并没有带来大受欢迎的终端或软件,而是给诺基亚留下了至少两款被抛弃的操作系统和一大堆专利。据分析师现在估计,这些专利的价值在60亿美元左右,构成了整个公司价值的主要部分。首席执行长埃洛普(Stephen Elop)准备从这些“传家宝”里面拿出更多东西卖掉,让公司支撑到能够扭转自身命运的时刻。
'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采访中说,要是诺基亚的创新当初落实在产品上面,诺基亚就不是现在这个样子了。
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.
在危机四伏的手机市场迷失方向的公司不只诺基亚一家。Research In Motion Ltd.(简称RIM)曾因电子邮件终端黑莓(BlackBerry)而占据霸主地位,但它也没有能够拿出一款与iPhone一较高下的产品。
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.'
受此影响,RIM的市值在过去五年缩水约90%,其CEO正在努力让投资者相信该公司并没有陷入“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的问题是缺乏合适的产品,而诺基亚实际上是开发出了今天消费者疯狂抢购的几类终端,只是没有把这些终端引入市场。就在iPhone颠覆市场的时候,诺基亚把重心从智能手机移回到基本款手机上面,犯下了战略错误。
'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.'
原诺基亚首席设计师诺沃说,苹果在这一概念上占得先机时,我感觉非常心痛;每当别人说iPhone作为一个概念和一款硬件产品是独一无二的,我都感到难过。
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年成为诺基亚首位非芬兰籍的首席执行长,现在他正努力调整公司的战略重心。他说,诺基亚过去因为它在市场的主导地位而变得自满了。
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.
埃洛普上任不久后,就停止了诺基亚自有智能手机软件的研发,他说该公司将使用微软(Microsoft Corp.)的Windows移动操作系统。埃洛普说,这样他就能够在不足一年之内推出一个新的手机系列与iPhone竞争,比诺基亚坚持使用自己的软件推出产品的速度要快得多。
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.
诺基亚推出的Windows手机销售情况并不好。该公司尚未公布销售数据,但今年4月曾说初期销售情况喜忧参半,两个月后又说竞争比他们预期的更激烈。埃洛普被迫在6月中旬宣布诺基亚再裁员1万人并削减成本17亿美元,裁员和成本削减主要将针对研发部门。周日,诺基亚将在美国销售的Windows手机降价一半,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.
诺基亚长期以来一直能够成功适应巨大的市场变化。该公司创立于1865年,最初是一家木材厂,后来逐渐将业务多样化,进入发电和塑料产品领域。
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.
上世纪80年代末,苏联的解体和欧洲的衰退造成诺基亚各类产品的需求大幅下滑,公司陷入危机。1992年,曾为花旗银行(Citibank)银行家的奥利拉(Jorma Ollila)接任首席执行长一职,将诺基亚的业务重点放到手机上。
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.
诺基亚的工厂最终出现在从德国到中国的诸多国家,诺基亚的物流环节运转得非常顺畅,以致于它能够比世界上任何其他制造商都更快地满足全球消费者的手机需求。诺基亚的利润大幅上升,该公司股价也随之飙升,2000年诺基亚的市值最高曾达到3,030亿欧元。
Mr. Ollila and other top executives became stars in Finland, often requesting private dining rooms when they went out to eat, senior executives said.
高管们说,奥利拉和其他高层管理人员在芬兰成了明星,他们出去用餐时常常要用包间。
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.
早在当年,奥利拉即开始为诺基亚的下一阶段改造打下基础。诺基亚的高管们曾预测,2000年前,生产仅具有电话功能的手机将难以继续盈利。于是,诺基亚开始斥资数十亿美元研发手机电子邮件、触控屏和更快速的无线网络。
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,该公司发布了其首款智能手机“诺基亚9000”,并称它是首款能够收发电子邮件、发传真和上网的手机。这款手机重量略低于一磅。
'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.'
奥利拉说,我们对手机行业的发展曾有着准确的预见。2006年,他辞去首席执行长一职,今年5月辞去了董事长一职。他说,我们的眼光超前了约五年。
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.
“诺基亚9000”又被称为“Communicator”,曾在影片《圣人》(The Saint)中亮过相,在某些企业用户中获得了很大的关注,但从未征服过普通大众。