经济学人下载:日本武士走向没落

Old hardware companies want a slice of the software sashimi. Most are looking abroad. On July 1st NTT, Japan’s incumbent telecoms operator, said it would acquire OpSource, a cloud-computing software firm in California, for $90m through its South African software subsidiary, Dimension Data, which NTT acquired last year for $3.3 billion. Hitachi and Toshiba are hunting for software firms, too. Fujitsu, a big hardware firm, already gets two-thirds of its revenue and nearly all its profits from software and services.

老的计算机软件公司想要分得软件行业的一杯羹。大部分公司正在放眼世界。7月1日日本电信运营商NTT宣布它将通过南非的软件子公司Dimension Data以9000万美元的价格收购一家位于加利福尼亚州的云计算软件公司OpSource，去年这个NTT的子公司赚了33亿美元。日立公司和东芝公司也正在搜寻软件公司。大型硬件生产企业富士，其营业额的2/3和几乎全部利润均来自于软件和服务业务。

Japan’s indigenous software industry faces several obstacles. The country lacks venture capital, a vibrant stockmarket and angel investors with technical knowledge to nurture start-ups. And its big, slow firms tend to suffocate the small fry, says Fujiyo Ishiguro, the founder of Netyear, an online-marketing software firm (and one of the few female bosses of a publicly-listed company in Japan).

日本本土软件产业面临着很多阻碍。日本缺乏扶植初期产业的风险投资、朝气蓬勃的证券市场以及具备技术知识的天使投资人。Netyear是一家从事网络营销的企业，其创始人Fujiyo Ishiguro认为，日本一些规模庞大但发展缓慢的企业往往会制约中小企业的发展。（Fujiyo Ishiguro是日本为数不多的上市公司的女掌门。）

For now, hardware is king. Newspapers cheered when Riken and Fujitsu unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer in June. But the shift towards the intangible is inevitable, says Ms Ishiguro. Japan’s sissies are tougher than they look.

目前，硬件产业仍然是日本的龙头。今年六月份，理研和富士公司联合发布了世界最快的超级计算机，媒体都对此欢呼雀跃。但是，Ishiguro女士说，向软件产业转型已经是不可避免的趋势。日本的“懦夫们”并不像他们看似那样没用！