2012.02.18
【导读】
过去40多年，日本一直被视为壁垒森严的市场。借助完善的产业分工，它在几乎所有领域都有数量庞大的企业，一度统治了全球电子市场，在PC与手机领域，也曾具有强劲力量。但这骄傲的一幕，却被日益深化的互联网时代冲垮了。当美、韩、台湾地区及中国开始全面适应这一热潮时，日本固守着硬件地盘。这种固执带来了惨痛的教训。近日，日本三大电子企业——索尼、夏普和松下相继预告2011财年将迎来巨亏。本文借助NEC例子，一步步分析了日本电子企业没落的根源。
Japanese manufacturing
日本制造业
From summit to plummet
帝国没落，辉煌不再
Once global leaders, Japanese electronics firms are tumbling
曾经称霸全球的日本电子公司如今却如风中残烛
IN TOKYO’S posh Ginza shopping district the Apple Store is packed, but the nearby Sony showroom is as lifeless as a mausoleum. In recent days the largest Japanese gadget-makers said they expect to lose a combined $17 billion in the financial year 2011. Panasonic alone expects to lose $10 billion. Meanwhile South Korea’s Samsung enjoyed profits of $15 billion and America’s Apple hauled in $22 billion.
奢侈品汇聚的东京银座街区：苹果专卖店里熙熙攘攘，门庭若市，而距其几步之遥的索尼展厅却鲜有人问津，静如墓地。近日，日本最大的小电器制造商们纷纷表示在2011财政年度将预计亏损共计170亿美元。仅松下一家就预计亏损100亿美元。与此同时，韩国三星公司却坐享盈利150亿美元，美国苹果公司更是捞到了220亿美元。
Since 2000 the big five Japanese electronics firms have lost two-thirds of their value (see chart). What ails them? High costs and a strong yen don’t help. Nor does a recent legal change that bars them from claiming certain tax credits they had counted on. But the sickness runs deeper.
自2000年起，日本的五大电子公司市值缩水近三分之二（见上图）。日本企业的病根在哪？高成本和走势强劲的日元不足以至此，近期的一项法律修改虽然取消了他们长期依赖的部分税收抵免政策，但也不是原因。日本企业的病根还在更深处。
Too many Japanese firms make similar things. No fewer than eight crank out mobile phones; more than ten make rice-cookers and six make televisions. The overlap is inefficient: it duplicates research and development, reduces economies of scale and destroys pricing power.
生产同类产品的日本企业多如繁星——十余家生产电饭煲，八九家做手机，六七家造彩电。产品类型的重叠不仅效率低下，还浪费研发时间，降低规模经济，破坏企业定价权。
Companies often stay in markets where they cannot compete. This wastes huge amounts of capital. Rather than sticking to what they do best, they bleed their strong divisions to feed their losers. This is not sustainable. Fitch, a ratings agency, recently downgraded the debts of Panasonic and Sony to one notch above junk status and placed Sharp’s on negative outlook.
企业总想在自己份额不足的市场中保住自己，这样势必会浪费大量资金。在此形势下，他们非但没有继续巩固市场份额高的市场，而是用前者的盈利去弥补软肋的亏损，这更不是长久之计。惠誉评级公司近期不但下调了松下、索尼的信用等级，距垃圾级仅差一级，还将夏普的评级展望调为负面。
To understand how Japan’s once-mighty electronics industry has grown so flabby, consider the story of NEC. It used to be one of the world’s biggest IT and telecoms firms, but it has failed to adapt to changing times. Its shares have fallen by 90% in the past decade and by 40% in the past year alone. It has sulked from one restructuring plan to another. The latest came on January 26th, when it forecast a ¥100 billion ($1.3 billion) loss for the fiscal year instead of a ¥15 billion profit, and said it would have to sack 10,000 employees, around 9% of the workforce.
欲知日本昔日不可一世的电子业如何逐步走向衰退，且看日本电气公司（NEC）[1]的经历便可略知一二。NEC曾是全球最大的信息和电信公司之一，可却无法与时俱进。其股价在过去的十年间下滑了90%，仅去年一年就下滑40%。NEC在几番重组计划中纠结不定。在1月26日最新公布的重组计划中，NEC将其在本财年的业绩从盈利150亿日元改为亏损1000亿日元（约13亿美元），同时还宣布计划全球裁员10，000名，占员工总数的近9%。
For most of the time since it was founded in 1899, the Nippon Electric Company’s main customer was the state. So NEC’s own culture has long been bureaucratic. When Japan’s telecoms market was liberalised in the 1990s the former monopoly operator, NTT, was forced to compete. But NEC was not. Quite the opposite. NTT demanded highly specialised technical specifications from its suppliers. NEC was happy to churn out weird wireless standards and arcane signalling protocols for NTT, since its giant customer guaranteed it huge sales at margins that, in effect, paid all the R&D costs. Moreover, NTT’s technical demands acted as a barrier to entry for rivals both domestic and foreign.
自1899年成立伊始，日本政府就是NEC的门上贵客，故NEC的官僚气息也由此得来，历史已久。在上世纪90年代日本电信市场自由化风暴中，曾经的业内霸主NTT（日本电话电报公司）[2]被迫进入市场竞争，而NEC则有幸逃过此劫。NTT要求供货商有高度专业化的技术规格。相反，NEC则乐于为NTT潜心研发奇怪的无线标准和晦涩的信令协议。更何况，NTT这个大客户的采购数量保证了NEC的利润率，事实上也同时保证了后者的研发经费。 此外，NTT对技术的需求恰为NEC 国内外的竞争对手设置了入市壁垒。
It was a cosy arrangement, but dangerous in the long run. It was not easy for NEC to modify the complex technology it sold to NTT for other clients. Indeed, NTT treated sales to domestic rivals as an act of disloyalty and threatened to cut orders if NEC made too many. These old ties are still strong: even today NEC holds around ¥2.6 billion in NTT shares.
此番安排看似两全其美，实则隐患长存。NEC很难将为NTT定制的复杂技术稍作修改以供他人使用。把产品卖给国内对手更是被NTT视为不忠，后者还威胁NEC称若做过了头便要削减订单数。当然，旧交情还是固若金汤，即便是今日NEC仍握有NTT近26亿日元的股票。
Working for NTT, NEC gained little experience of how to operate its equipment inside a live network. This makes it hard for NEC to do any business outside Japan, where operators typically want vendors to help run the equipment. Such services yield recurring revenues with high margins. NEC is stuck with the hardware, which is rapidly becoming a low-margin commodity business.
在与NTT搭档的这些年里，NEC始终没学会如何在不断变化的网络中运作自己。这也使NEC在拓展全球业务中的举步维艰，因为多数海外运营商都希望供应商能协助运作设备。而这类服务恰是利润高的经常性收入。NEC却一心把守硬件市场，而硬件业务的利润率正迅速降低。
NEC also deals with NTT DoCoMo[3], a mobile operator spun out of NTT. This is just as clubby. NTT DoCoMo does not let manufacturers devise their own products to compete against each other. Instead, it demands specific features from each of them, and tries to keep them all afloat. For example, one maker is instructed to produce a basic camera in a super-slim handset, while another is told to make a high-end camera in a brick.
NEC还得同NTT剥离出来的手机公司NTT DoCoMo打交道。这又是个封闭的小圈子。 DoCoMo的手段不是任制造商们自发研制产品来相互竞争，而是向他们分别提出特定的要求，并试图同他们都保持良好的关系。比如，要求制造商A为一款超薄手机安装普通摄像头，而要求制造商B给大哥大安装高端摄像头。
This helps explain why Japan’s phone market suffers from the “Galapagos effect”[4]. Its technology evolves in isolation and struggles to succeed elsewhere. Japan produces nearly 30m handsets a year, but sells very few abroad.
这或许能解释日本手机市场受“加拉帕斯效应”折磨的原因：日本的手机技术一直在封闭的孤岛演化，离开了本土就难以生存。日本年产手机3000万部，但极少销往国外。
After liberalisation, NTT had to cut costs. NEC saw its earnings dip, but life was still comfortable. So it did not bother with the drastic reforms that telecoms equipment-makers elsewhere undertook. When it did try to diversify, it landed in trouble: the acquisition in the 1990s of Packard Bell, an American PC maker, was a failure. So NEC mostly stayed at home in Japan.
经自由风暴洗礼后的NTT不得不削减成本。NEC的收入虽然也有下滑却不碍大事，所以当其他电信设备制造商大刀阔斧的改革的时候，NEC连眼皮都懒得眨。而当NEC试图改变的时候却遭遇壁垒：20世纪90年代收购美国PC生产企业帕卡德•贝尔就是败笔。因此，NEC业务很少迈出日本老家。
Despite its plodding management, NEC has often been technically brilliant. It used to vie with Cray and IBM to build the world’s fastest supercomputers. Its know-how was critical to the success of Japan’s space-satellite programme. Yet these are small markets. NEC’s research labs may be among the best in the world, but it has been forced to slash its R&D budget this year to half the level of 2008.
虽然NEC在管理上沉闷乏味，但也曾有着辉煌的技术发展史。在制造世界上最快的超级计算机的比赛中，NEC曾和超级计算机之父Cray以及IT巨头IBM同场竞技。NEC的技术也为日本太空卫星计划的成功也起到了关键作用。然而这些技术应用的市场都太小众。 NEC可能拥有全球最顶尖的科研实验室之一，但今年也被迫将研发经费压缩至2008年的一半。
As its difficulties have mounted, NEC has sold assets, including stakes in its LCD-display unit, its mobile-phone arm and its personal-computer division. By dawdling, it received less. And it has not made a clean break; it retains minority stakes.
NEC深陷愁苦泥塘，已开始出售资产以求出路，其中包括出售LCD面板部件的股权，公司的手机部和个人电脑部。却因出手拖拉回报甚少，而且NEC的抛售也拖泥带水，还保留着小部分股权。
Today, NEC produces little that other firms don’t make as well. Alas for Japan, it is far from alone. Sharp’s cellphones and LCD televisions have to battle Panasonic’s and Sony’s and Toshiba’s and Hitachi’s. All are losing market share to Samsung and Apple. “When other Japanese companies see NEC, they can’t think it is only NEC’s problems,” says a former grandee at a big electronics firm. Will they do anything about it? He looks away and sighs. “Everyone knows we need to change, and no one can make the changes,” he says.
如今，NEC已很少生产小众化产品。哀哉，日本！NEC绝不是个例：夏普的手机和LEC电视不得不同松下、索尼、东芝和日立的电视同台竞争。然而，这些公司的市场份额都在被三星和苹果侵蚀。一名日本某大型电子公司前任高管人说：“其他的日本企业看到NEC的遭遇时，他们不难意识到这不仅只是NEC自身的问题。”但当问及日本企业该如何应对时，他摇头叹气道：“大家心理都清楚我们需要改变，但没人有勇气付诸于行动。”
from the print edition | Business 译者：王葭苇
本文原文出自《经济学人》杂志
【附注】
[1]日本电气股份有限公司（日文：日本电気株式会社，英文：NEC Corporation，Nippon Electric Company, Limited的简称）简称日本电气或日电或NEC，是一家跨国信息技术公司，总部位于日本东京港区(Minato-Ku)。NEC为商业企业、通信服务以及政府提供信息技术（IT）和网络产品。它的经营范围主要分成三个部分：IT解决方案、网络解决方案和电子设备。
[2] NTT是Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation(日本电话电报公司)的缩写。Docomo是，是哪儿都行的意思。DoCoMo这个名字的意思是取Do Communication Over the Mobile Network中的首字﹙电信沟通无界限﹚，DoCoMo日文どこも的发音（罗马字）日语里则带有｢无所不在everywhere｣的意思。 DoCoMo是1991年8月由日本公司日本电信电话（NTT）所分出来的，专营电信业务。目前系统包括有PHS、MOVA、FOMA和 paging与satellite五种。
[3]NTT DoCoMo公司是日本电报电话公司的手机公司（或服务品牌） TYO: 9437 NYSE：DCM。NTT DoCoMo是目前世界上最大的移动通信公司之一，也是最早推出3G商用服务的运营商。
[4]The “Galapagos Effect,” for those unfamiliar with the term, is used to describe Japan's unique culture of technology that has not expanded beyond Japan's borders, in the same way that the Galapagos Islands exemplify unique evolutionary developments in nature。
