经济学人下载:黑莓 只有荆棘光环

Business
商业报道

BlackBerry
黑莓

Only thorns
只有荆棘光环

For a fallen star of the smartphone industry, things go from bad to worse
智能手机行业一个明星的倒下，每况愈下

THE signs do not look good.
形势不妙。

On November 4th, six weeks after BlackBerry said that its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial, wanted to take the ailing Canadian smartphone-maker private for 4.7 billion in cash, the sale was called off.
11月4日，黑莓表示在其最大股东费尔法克斯金融想趁疲弱的加拿大智能手机市场套现4.7亿美元现金的六周后，这个出售计划取消了。

BlackBerry instead declared that it would raise 1 billion in debt, convertible into 16% of its shares.
黑莓用16％的可转换股份取代发行10亿美元的债务。

Fairfax, a Toronto holding company that focuses on insurance but owns 10% of BlackBerry, is taking a quarter of the issue. Barbara Stymiest, who chairs BlackBerry's board, called this a significant vote of confidence in BlackBerry and its future.
费尔法克斯是多伦多一家控股公司，在这次交易中占了四分之一，其主要从事保险业务，拥有10％的黑莓股份。黑莓的董事会主席芭芭拉Stymiest把这项交易称为对黑莓和其未来的一个重大的信任投票。

The stockmarket called it a flop the share price, already a fraction of what it once was, fell by 16%.
股市把它称为翻牌：股价同比下降了16％，已经跌倒只有以前的一小部分了。

Thus BlackBerry ended a review of strategic alternatives with no visible alternative strategy—and no chief executive.
没有明显的替代策略也没有首席执行官，因此黑莓结束了重新审视战略选择。

Thorsten Heins, its boss since January 2012, was unseated.
自2012年1月，老板索斯藤海因斯被剥夺了权利。

He brought a much-delayed operating system, BlackBerry 10, to market, but this will not make much difference.
他为市场带来了已经被拖延很久的黑莓10操作系统，但这却没有太大不同。

Although lots of people still carry BlackBerrys, not many of those devices are new.
虽然很多人仍然在使用黑莓手机并不多，但是用新机的不多。

BlackBerrys have not only been squished by Apple's iPhone and by Android devices; they are also being outsold by phones with Microsoft's Windows.
黑莓不仅被苹果的iPhone挤压和而且还有Android设备的竞争，他们还在出售搭载windows 操作系统的手机。

In its latest quarter BlackBerry lost 965m, mostly because of a write-down of unsold phones.
在最新的季度黑莓亏损9.65亿美元，主要是因为手机积压。

Last month it made its BBM instant-message service available as an iPhone and Android app.
上个月，它推出了BBM即时消息服务为iPhone和Android提供应用程序。

Mr Heins has a temporary replacement John Chen, the former head of Sybase, a software company that he knocked back into shape before selling it to, of Germany,in 2010.
海因斯先生被临时撤换为赛贝斯的前负责人陈约翰，在2010年出售给德国之前他将SAP这家软件公司扭亏为盈。

Once a permanent chief executive is found , Mr Chen will stay as executive chairman.
一旦一个永久性的首席执行官被发现，陈先生将出任执行董事长。

It is not yet clear whether his background in software is a clue to BlackBerry's future.
目前尚不清楚他的软件方面的背景对黑莓是不是一个有利的因素。

He seems keen to keep selling handsets.
他似乎热衷于手机的销售。

Roberta Cozza of Gartner, a research firm, thinks BlackBerry should become a niche player, focusing on applications and services for companies to which secure communication is especially important.
咨询公司Gartner的罗伯塔·科扎认为黑莓应该成为一个合适的运动员，把重点放在对企业特别重要的应用和服务上。

I don't think their priority should be hardware at all, Ms Cozza says.
科扎女士说：我不认为他们的当务之急是把心思放在硬件上。

Mr Chen told Reuters that at Sybase he had seen the same movie before. Canadians also know the story.
陈先生告诉路透社说，在赛贝斯之前看到了同样的电影。

The version they saw involved Nortel Networks, a telecoms-equipment company that was heading for oblivion when Research In Motion (as BlackBerry used to be called) was on the rise.
加拿大人也知道这个故事。他们说的是北电网络，在Research In Motion公司上升时被遗忘的一家通信设备公司。

Nortel too was a high-tech source of national pride.
北电也是一个让国家自豪的高科技公司。

It also brought in a turnaround specialist when its fortunes darkened.
它在前景黯淡时还转亏为盈。

Alas, the ending was unhappy it went bankrupt in 2009, albeit bequeathing a pile of patents worth billions.
唉，结局不太好：它在2009年破产，虽然遗赠一堆价值数十亿美元的专利。

The demise of Nortel hit the Canadian psyche very hard and the same thing would happen if BlackBerry failed, says Don Drummond, a former senior civil servant.
前高级公务员唐·德拉蒙德说 北电的消亡给加拿大带来很大的心理冲击，如果黑莓失败就会发生同样的事情。

It is no comfort that others in the cruelly Darwinian smartphone business have also begun to look like wounded gazelles.
其他公司在这残酷的达尔文式的智能手机业务上也开始看起来像受伤的羚羊一样不舒适。

On November 5th Taiwan's HTC reported its first quarterly loss.
11月5日台湾的宏达披露了第一季度的亏损。

It added that sales in the first ten months of 2013, at NT175.5 billion, were down by 29% from a year earlier and by 57% from 2011, when HTC was briefly the biggest seller of smartphones in America.
补充了2013前10个月的销售业NT1755亿，同比下降29％，与2011年比下降57％，那时HTC是美国最大的智能手机卖家。

HTC has made mistakes, but its chief problem has been having Samsung, with its scale and marketing clout, as a competitor in Android phones.
HTC曾经犯过错误，但其主要问题是三星的规模和市场影响力，Android手机的竞争对手。

A third national phone champion, Nokia of Finland, has sold its device division to Microsoft.
销售量排第三的芬兰诺基亚将其设备部门出售给微软。

The other two are battling on alone, HTC apparently out of choice—its chairwoman says it is not for sale—but BlackBerry out of necessity.
其他两个则在单独作战，其董事长说HTC是出于自己的选择不打算出售，但对黑莓来说是必要的。

Its shareholders will be praying that Mr Chen can direct a sequel to Sybase, not Nortel.
它的股东只能祈祷，陈先生可以再续赛贝斯而不是北电。