经济学人下载:索尼 管理权重回日本人手里

Business
商业报道

Sony
索尼

Back in Japanese hands
管理权重回日本人手里

Kazuo Hirai's new strategy gives Sony's business a blurry future
平井一夫的新策略让索尼的商业未来变得模糊

IT IS too much to expect one man single-handedly to rescue Sony, the Japanese firm which formerly made world-beating electronic products but is now almost as well-known for making losses.
索尼，这间曾经制造过世界一流电子产品的日本公司，但现在，制造亏损的能力几乎同样出名。期望有人能用一己之力拯救索尼，但这期望过高了。

Even so, Kazuo Hirai, who unveiled his outlook for the company on April 12th less than a fortnight after taking its management back into Japanese hands, has had a tumultuous start。
即使这样，平井一夫还是在困难中启航。在4月12日，距离公司的管理大权回到日本人的手里才两周不到，他就公布了对于公司前途的展望。

On April 10th the company predicted it would lose 520 billion yen in the fiscal year that ended on March 31st, the biggest loss in its 65-year history.
4月10号，公司预计，截止到3月31号为止，公司的年度财政将亏损5200亿日元，是索尼65年来最大的亏损。

The new forecast, twice as bad as had been expected as recently as February, clobbered its shares, which have fallen by 40% in a year.
这份最新财政预测是最近在二月所预测的亏损的两倍，这使其股价继一年内跌了40%后，再次遭受重挫。

The increased losses stemmed largely from an accounting charge:
不断增加的亏损大部分来源于一项会计费用：

in the company's fourth consecutive year of red ink, Sony decided it could no longer carry tax losses as an asset.
在公司连续四年亏损后，索尼决定不再将税收损失作为一项资产。

The news hit me hard, Mr Hirai admitted.
平井先生承认，这消息打击了我。

But paper losses aside, the underlying electronics business is also bleeding money.
但除去账面的损失，基础的电子业务也是出血的钱。

Mr Hirai laid out aggressive targets to improve performance, though he offered few concrete ideas on how to achieve them.
平井先生设定了具有挑战性的目标去提升业绩，可是他在怎样完成这些目标上几乎没有提出什么新的具体想法。

Interestingly, he named three products as core to Sony:
有趣的是，他指定三项产品作为索尼的核心部分：

digital imaging, including cameras; gaming; and mobile phones.
包括照相机在内的数字图像；游戏以及移动电话。

Conspicuous by their absence were televisions.
引人注目的是他们在电视机业务上的缺失。

They are not just a problem for Sony, which has lost money on the business for eight years.
索尼已经在电视机业务持续亏损了8年，电视机业务已经不仅是索尼的问题了。

Sharp and Panasonic, its two main Japanese rivals, are also likely to lose money on TVs this year, as well as on other parts of their electronic businesses.
索尼在日本的两个主要竞争对手，夏普跟松下，今年也很可能在电视业务上遭受亏损，它们其他的电子业务也一样遭受亏损。

What makes televisions such a millstone for these firms is that none has the guts to exit the business completely;
让电视机业务成为这些公司的一个沉重负担的原因是，没有一间公司有勇气完全退出此业务，

nor are they aggressively revamping it.
也没有人对此业务进行积极的改进。

Instead they lean towards what Yoshiharu Izumi of J.P. Morgan, a securities firm, calls managed decline.
相反，他们倾向于接受证劵公司摩根大通Yoshiharu Izumi所形容的可控的衰退。

Mr Hirai had already announced that Sony's TV production goal would be halved, from 40m units to 20m.
平井先生已经宣布索尼电视机目标产量将会减半，从4千万台减到2千万台。

There was little to suggest he has any higher hope for TVs than to turn a profit in the year ending March 2014.
并没有迹象表明，他对已经在2014年3月末实现转亏为盈的电视机业务有更高的期望。

However, he left open the possibility of alliances with other Japanese television makers:
尽管如此，他仍保持着和其他的日本电视机制造商联合一起的可能性，因为自从上个月夏普将部分业务卖给了苹果的主要供应商

talk of such co-operation has grown since Sharp was part-sold to Taiwan's Hon Hai, Apple's main supplier, last month.
台湾的鸿海集团后，对类似的合作谈论得越来越多。

Analysts hope that, being Japanese, Mr Hirai will have more success than his Welsh-born predecessor, Sir Howard Stringer, in uniting Sony's 168,000 employees behind a call for reform.
分析家希望，作为日本人的平井先生能比他威尔斯籍的前任CEO霍华德.斯仃格，在团结索尼公司168,000雇员呼吁改革上能取得更大的成功。

But apart from repeating Sony will change any number of times in his opening presentation, there was not much evidence of new thinking.
但除了在他的开场白上多次重复索尼将会改变外，并没有更多的证据证明他有新的思路。

He mentioned 10,000 job cuts, but at least 3,000 of these will be accounted for by spinning off companies.
他提及裁员10,000人，但其中至少3000是算进被拆分的子公司。

To those worried about Sony's decline, it is whole divisions, not jobs, that need to be cut, in order to focus on what the company does best. Sadly, that message did not come through.
对于那些担心索尼衰落的人来说，索尼为了集中发展能使公司变得更好的业务上，需要裁掉的是整个亏损业务而不是员工。但令人遗憾的是，这信息并没有被传达。