经济学人253:微软和个人电脑业

　　Microsoft and the PC industry

微软和个人电脑业

Defenestrated

被抛弃

Steve Ballmer is a casualty of the personal computer’s rapid decline

史蒂夫鲍尔默是个人电脑迅速衰败的罪魁祸首

Aug 31st 2013 |From the print edition

UNTIL August 23rd few people would have described Steve Ballmer as “retiring”. Microsoft’s chief executive has played both tiger and Tigger: snarling 1 (toothlessly, as it turned out) at Apple’s gadgets 2; and bouncing, with a whoop 3, onto conference stages to extol 4 his company’s wares 5. But retiring he is, within a year.

在8月23日之前很少人会想到史蒂夫鲍尔默会退休。微软的首席执行官即使老虎也是跳跳虎，与苹果的产品叫板，但是结果却没什么威胁，在发布会上吹嘘其产品。但是他将会在一年之内退休。

Mr Ballmer’s departure is a surprise. He had announced a reorganisation of the company only in July and had hoped to oversee 6 much of the change. Some celebrated 7 his going: Microsoft’s share price went up by 7.3% on the day the news broke. Mr Ballmer has plenty of critics, although Microsoft’s revenues have trebled on his 13-year watch, to $77.8 billion in the year to June, and profits have grown similarly, to $21.9 billion. The critics point at the rise of Apple and Google, and say Microsoft should have done better—or handed some of its $77 billion of cash to shareholders 8. In an interview with the Seattle Times, Mr Ballmer denied that pressure from ValueAct, a fund with a small stake in the firm, helped push him out.

鲍尔默的离职是一个意外。就在七月他还宣布了公司的重组，希望能看到改变。一些人为他的离开叫好，微软的股价在鲍尔默退休消息传出的一天内上涨了7.3%。尽管微软的营收在鲍尔默的13年掌舵期间翻了三倍，达到了219亿美元，但是他还是饱受批评。批评者瞄向苹果和谷歌的崛起，表示微软应该比现在做的更好，或者将其770亿现金部分返给股东。在一次来自西雅图时报的采访中，鲍尔默否认了其迫于拥有微软小部分股份的基金ValueAct而离开的说法。

Microsoft sits atop a pyramid of companies that prospered 9 from the long boom in personal computers (PCs). The vast majority of PCs run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system and are powered by Intel’s processors. They bear the brands of Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lenovo and others, and nowadays are mostly made by Taiwanese contractors 10. The trouble is that people increasingly prefer to buy mobile devices, made by Apple or running Google’s Android operating system. Sales of PCs have been falling at double-digit rates. From the pyramid’s apex 11 to its base, companies are desperate both to refresh the PC and reduce their reliance on it. Few are having much success.

微软坐在受益于个人电脑长期繁荣的公司金字塔顶端。大部分的个人电脑跑的是微软的视窗操作系统，用的是英特尔的处理器。它们支撑着戴尔，惠普，联想和其他品牌，大部分是有台湾代工厂完成的。现在的麻烦是人们越来越多的倾向于苹果生产或者运行谷歌安卓操作系统的移动设备。个人电脑销量以两位数的速率在下降。金字塔上的公司个个都昂着更新个人电脑，减少它们对个人电脑业务的依赖。几乎没有一家取得成功。

Frank Gillett of Forrester, a research firm, reckons that Windows’ share of the market for personal devices, once 95% or more, has dropped to around 30%. Microsoft responded belatedly with Windows 8, a new edition intended for touchscreen PCs and tablets launched last October, with variations for cheaper tablets and phones. Applications lie behind oblong tiles designed for fingertips rather than icons 12 for mouse-clicks. Microsoft’s successful Xbox entertainment system was given the same look. The idea was that this uniform style would help to transfer Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop 13 to mobile devices, and refresh the PC too.

调查公司Forrester的Frank Gillett认为微软一度站个人设备市场95%以上的视窗系统现在所占份额跌到了大概30%。微软随后的回应是适用于触屏个人电脑和平板电脑的视窗8系统，发布于去年十月，同时拥有廉价平板和电话的版本。应用以矩形磁贴展示在桌面，为了使用手指触控而不是鼠标点击。微软成功的Xbox娱乐系统也使用同样的外观。微软的想法是这种风格上的统一会帮助微软从桌面霸主转变成移动设备霸主，同时也更新个人电脑。

It has not happened yet. Few businesses were likely to hurry to buy Windows 8 anyway; some have yet to switch to its predecessor 14, Windows 7. Consumers have not taken to tiles on PC screens: a new version, Windows 8.1, due in October, will make it easier for them to stick with the old look. Only now is a wide choice of touch PCs and tablet-PC hybrids 15 appearing.

然而这个愿景还没有实现。很少的企业急着想购买视窗8系统，有些甚至都没有使用前代的视窗7系统。消费者也没有习惯笔记本屏幕上的磁贴，将于10月发布的最新版本的视窗8.1会让消费者更简单的回到传统桌面。现在有很多混合型平板电脑机型出现在市面上。

Microsoft’s own tablet, the Surface, has been a flop 16, forcing it to make a $900m write-off in its latest results. Windows phones, mostly made by Nokia of Finland, are far behind iPhones and Android devices, with just 3.3% of the world market according to Gartner, another research firm. They have ousted 17 BlackBerry from third place, but that is not saying much.

微软自家的平板Surface是一款失败的产品，到现在只销售了9亿美元。另一家调查公司Gartner表示，使用微软操作系统的手机，主要由芬兰的诺基亚生产，销量远远落后于iPhone和安卓设备，只占到手机世界市场的3.3%。它们已经取代了黑莓第三的位置，但是也说明不了什么。

Next to Microsoft at the apex, Intel has also done poorly in smartphones and tablets, though it is striving to catch up and in June unveiled a new chip that it hopes will bring new zip to PCs. Among the PC-makers, HP pondered quitting altogether in 2011, then sacked the chief executive who suggested it. Meg Whitman, his successor, chose to stay in, as well as pushing into services and software and shedding 27,000 jobs. She has plenty still to do: HP’s latest results, on August 21st, sent a share-price rally into reverse. At Dell, which is scrapping 18 for much the same ground, Michael Dell, the founder 19 and chief executive, still hopes to win a battle to take the company private. Of the leading PC-makers, Lenovo has coped best. Its home market, China, is slowing but growing, and it is selling plenty of smartphones.

跟微软地位相同的英特尔在智能手机和平板市场表现也不佳，尽管其在努力追赶，并于6月发布了一款新的处理器，希望给个人电脑注入新的力量。在所有的个人电脑生产商中，惠普在2011年曾考虑退出，然后解雇了提出这个想法的首席执行官。继任者Meg Whitman选择继续留在个人电脑市场，进军服务和软件行业，并减少了27000个职位。她仍然有很多事要做：惠普8月21日最新的财报显示股价重新下跌。戴尔的境遇也非常相似，创始人兼首席执行官迈克尔戴尔仍然希望让公司私营化。在所有的个人电脑制造巨头中，联想的表现是最好的。在本土市场中国，联想在缓慢增长，同时也销售相当部分的智能手机。

Despite its slow start in mobile, Microsoft remains 20 hugely profitable. “It’s easy to get focused only on Windows,” says David Cearley of Gartner. The firm was quicker than its rivals to provide cloud services to big companies. Although Google’s free word-processor and spreadsheet threaten its Office software, Microsoft still has most of its customers, to whom it can sell improved services online. The direction Mr Ballmer has set “makes a lot of sense”, Mr Cearley says. Had he set out sooner, he might have seen the journey through.

尽管在移动市场开始较慢，但是微软仍然有很大利润。Gartner的David Cearley表示，专注于视窗操作系统很容易。微软在给大公司提供云端服务上比其他对手快了不少。尽管谷歌免费的文本处理软件和表格处理软件对微软的Office构成了威胁，但是微软仍然拥有大部分顾客，微软向其销售改进的在线服务。Cearley说鲍尔默规划的方向起了很大的作用。尽管他就要离开，但是他可能看透了前景。