经济纵横 | 2010.06.28

“iPhone 4”大受欢迎 苹果成功有秘诀

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: 6月24日，“iPhone 4” 登陆德国市场，图片为汉堡的两位苹果迷手持新买的“iPhone 4”

美国苹果集团公司推出的平板电脑"ipad"开启新的成功，几周之内销售量超过200万台。而该公司新发售的手机"iPhone 4"预售量就达到60多万部。为什么每款新苹果产品都能走红？

掀起电子行业的崇拜风

首先，苹果成功的原因之一无疑是人们对苹果、尤其是对苹果公司总裁史蒂夫·乔布斯（Steve Jobs）产生的狂热崇拜。当乔布斯身穿牛仔裤和黑色高领毛衣站在舞台上展示苹果的新产品时，全世界的苹果迷和股票分析师都会认真倾听--因为在过去几 年，乔布斯多次展示了该公司开发的电子产品，而这些新玩意在计算机和媒体工业领域多次领导了革新潮流。Bildunterschrift: 苹果公司总裁史蒂夫· 乔布斯（Steve Jobs）展示IPhone 4

区别于其他制造商的媒体巨人

然而成功的关键是：苹果与很多其他电子产品制造商存在着区别，苹果公司的产品开发只占成功的一部分，产品最终还依赖于如何销售。苹果现在的成功，始 于大约10年前集团作出的决定-- 在线销售音乐。在此期间，苹果成为了全球最大的在线音乐销售商，以及电影、书籍和应用软件的供应商。苹果的出现造成了传统媒体公司,像是出版社的业务、市 场和利润部分减少。

"iPhone 4"：迷你电脑、移动的阅读设备

苹果开发的电子产品完全适合苹果的媒体销售渠道。不管是用平板电脑ipad还是用手机iPhone，人们都可以直接在网上商店下载音乐、电影和应用 程序。新手机"iPhone 4"仍继续朝着这一趋势发展：苹果主要对新款手机的屏幕进行了改进，型号还保持了原来的大小。另外，与上一代iPhone相比，新手机的屏幕像素要高出四 倍。这样图像要更清晰。在正常观看距离下，人的肉眼无法识别单个像素。而新手机的画面可以实现印刷图片的效果。这样看来，iPhone开拓了一条新的发展 道路，将手机作为报纸、杂志和书籍的平台。一些德国出版商希望通过苹果产品的成功，保障他们有一个全新成功的销售渠道。Bildunterschrift:

手机的高清视频剪辑功能

就苹果新款手机"iPhone 4"的硬件来说，苹果公司把它设计的更像是一个迷你电脑。在操作系统功能上安装了迄今只有传统计算机保留的功能，比如：多任务处理功能。通过这一功能，人 们可以同时执行多个程序。此外，苹果公司还重新改进了手机的摄像头。现在，它拍下的照片可以达到500万像素的清晰度，也是目前苹果手机中清晰度最高的一 款。"iPhone 4"的精华之处还在于，它可以录制高清晰视频，并直接在手机上进行剪辑，而这个功能也是迄今只在摄像机或计算机上所拥有的功能。

苹果必须遵守手机工业的循环周期

苹果公司现在推出"iPhone 4"并非偶然。大部分iPhone手机以一或两年签订合同的方式进行销售。距离上一次iPhone换代刚好是一年。眼下，许多iPhone3代持有者的合 同马上就要到期，在这个时候推出的新款手机又再次吸引了他们的目光。这样看来，苹果已成功地在关键领域将竞争者甩在了后面.

谷歌与无法预计的困难战斗着

苹果最强有力的竞争对手是谷歌。谷歌还推出了自己独有的"Android "手机操作系统。通常谷歌将手机的组装任务交给第三方制造商，人们可以免费使用这些操作系统。Android的市场份额急剧增长，但存在的问题可能谷歌自 己都没预料到，比如：Android系统有很多不同版本，当然也有不同的强大功能。但手机里将安装哪种版本，是否能做到定期更新？--这要取决于每个制造 商。一些制造商只顾追求开发新产品，也会导致发生这样的事情：有人买了一个新款Android手机，但是里边的软件已经过时。而苹果的手机是自己生产和销 售，不会出现这样的问题。

苹果的"审查政策"遭到强烈批评

与此同时，对苹果的批评声越来越大。这主要关系到该公司的"决策人"在集团中的职能：因为只有苹果公司才能决定， iPhone 和 iPad的用户允许看到哪些内容。对此，德国期刊杂志《明星》和《图片报》的报商已有所领教。在这些出版物中有一些衣着暴露的女性图片，而苹果公司强迫出 版商对这些图片进行处理，也就是说，要把图片中的关键部位进行遮挡。苹果公司的理由是：他们要按照美国的道德标准经营苹果的在线商店，不能按照世界上每个 人的标准去理解。今后，苹果在这些问题上将采取怎样的态度，也是决定集团未来命运的一个因素，或许这一点比今后向市场推出安装正确数据的手机更重要。

作者：Jörg Brunsmann / 严严

责编：石涛

• JUNE 21, 2010

Price Cuts Electrify E-Reader Market

截至週一﹐蘋果公司的iPad平板電腦在美國上 市80天內銷量達300萬台。分析師預計iPad的銷售表現有望有力提振該公司第三財季業績。

By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER

Associated Press

Amazon.com's Kindle 2

Two of the leading makers of electronic-book readers, threatened by the success of Apple Inc.'s iPad, slashed prices Monday in a move that could further drive e-readers into the mainstream.

Early Monday, Barnes & Noble Inc. cut the price of its Nook e-reader to $199 and introduced a Wi-Fi-only model for $149. Hours later, Amazon.com Inc. lowered the price of its Kindle e-reader to $189.

Both the Nook and Kindle previously sold for $259. While that was well below the iPad's starting price of $499, the e-readers lack the hit Apple product's color screen, ability to display video and websites, and thousands of specialized applications, or apps.

The moves aren't likely to end the gyrations in the nascent e-reader market. In coming weeks, both Amazon and Sony Corp. plan to unveil new versions of their devices, said people briefed on the matter. Analysts believe the new products also will emphasize lower prices.

Barnes & Noble said it dropped the Nook's price so it could reach a wider group of potential customers, especially ones who aren't hard-core readers. Amazon declined to comment beyond a press release that simply announced the price cut.

A price war for low-end e-readers could force Barnes & Noble and Amazon to rely more heavily on their profit from selling e-books. Under so-called agency sales agreements with many top publishers, e-bookstores keep about 30% of the sale price of e-books.

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Barnes & Noble cut the price of its Nook e-reader to $199. Amazon.com responded by slashing the price of its standard Kindle e-reader to $189. Both models had been $259.

Journal Community

"Booksellers are actually making money off of e-books now. That was not the case when they built their business plans and set their original prices for these devices," said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research.

"Now they can go to the old razor-world model of giving away the razor for free and selling the blades. They are starting to give away the e-reader," he said.

Largely due to price cuts, Mr. McQuivey estimates 6.6 million dedicated e-readers will be sold in the U.S. this year, bringing the total sold to over 10.4 million. He expects prices on some e-readers lacking wireless Internet access will hit $99 before the end of this year.

The price-cutting comes as makers of e-readers seek to differentiate themselves from the multipurpose iPad. Most dedicated e-readers cannot show color images or video. But unlike the shiny-screen iPad, they can be read in bright sunlight, such as on the beach.

Editors' Deep Dive: E-Reader Pricing War Heats Up

• PC MAGAZINE

  Kobo eReader Comes At a Smart Price Point

• Warren's Consumer Electronics Daily

  Sony Expanding Reader Distribution

• Publishers Weekly

  How About 'Both' Instead of 'Either/Or'?

That's why apart from price, e-reader makers are countering the Apple threat by focusing on reading. Speaking to investors last month, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said that a color display for the Kindle is "still some way out," and that Amazon was focused on serving "serious reading households."

Apple has shaken Amazon's grip on the emerging digital reading business. Earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that in the first 65 days the iPad was on the market, customers had downloaded some five million e-books from its iBookstore—and that the company has captured 22% of the e-book market. (The figure couldn't be verified independently.) That share is expected to grow after Apple releases its iBook app for the iPhone this week.

Barnes & Noble and Amazon have hedged their bets in the e-reader business, introducing apps for the iPad, iPhone and other gadgets that enable owners of those machines to buy and read e-books sold by B&N and Amazon.

Publishers had mixed reactions to the price cuts. Some were buoyed by the news because it suggests that e-books, the fastest-growing segment of their business, could grow even faster. Others expressed concern that e-books will further cannibalize sales of hardcover books, the most profitable corner of publishing.

David Young, CEO of Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, said that "anything that has the potential to harm printed book sales is worrying to publishers."

Roxanne Coady, who owns R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., said e-books present an opportunity for independent bookstores "to secure their position as the place where you to go see books. The question is, how do we convert that into sales?" One answer, she said, may be by further emphasizing the role of these stores as gathering places.

Bloomberg News

One leading publisher expressed concern that further growth in e-readers could lead to younger consumers buying the devices—and then looking for pirated digital books.

The new scaled-down, $149 Barnes & Noble Nook features only a Wi-Fi network connection for buying and downloading e-books, which will work on private networks, in Barnes & Noble stores and places where AT&T Corp. offers Wi-Fi service. The more-costly Nook, now $199, comes with an unlimited 3G cellular wireless Internet link for downloads.

With prices starting at $149, the potential market for the Nook could double or triple, said Tony Astarita, vice president of digital products at Barnes & Noble. "You really start opening up the device to people who are not necessarily heavy readers," he said.

Neither Barnes & Noble nor Amazon will say how many e-readers they have sold.

Mr. Astarita said his company, the largest U.S. bookstore chain, had been working on a lower-priced Nook long before Apple announced the iPad, and that it introduced the price cut now as part of a summer reading push.

Also on Monday, Toshiba Corp. unveiled a touch-screen mini-notebook PC that doubles as an electronic book reader, joining a growing number of electronics makers trying to enter the device category.

The Libretto W100, which will be released in late August in Japan, features two touch-screen displays, and when used as an electronic reader it looks like an open book.

—Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Yukari Iwatani Kane and Juro Osawa contributed to this article.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com

The Digital Pulse

Published: June 8, 2010


Just how adaptable are humans? That is the question underlying pervasive worries about the impact of modern technology, especially the boom in the use of personal laptops and hand-held devices, like the iPad and smartphones. Are we becoming skilled multitaskers? Or are we sacrificing our attention to long-term goals for the more primitive gratification of skimming tweets and e-mail messages? There are indeed some gloomy answers to these questions, the kind described in Matt Richtel’s article about the Campbell family in The Times on Monday.
That was a portrait of a family utterly distracted by their devices — not surprisingly so, since the family income derives from the software industry. But we think there’s a flip side to the story of technological harm. In fact, the story may be mostly flip side. Some statistics show a threefold increase in the consumption of “media” between 1996 and 2008. It’s hard to be happy if that means mostly watching “Lost” on a miniature screen.

But “media” in this sense means everything that flows through your desktop, laptop or smartphone. It has an addictive quality, in part because it reinforces deeply human traits — above all, a desire for social connection and mental stimulus. The electronic informational environment we live in is hardly passive. It is responsive, playful, and — yes — sometimes inane and trivial, not unlike our social discourse in the real world, including the world of families.

Yet when have humans ever had more immediate access to solid information? The Web may be a whirlpool of myth and misinformation, but it has also become a global library of fact and data. How we use it to enrich our lives — including our social lives — is an ongoing experiment in adaptation.

It’s extraordinary, too, how often our electronic lives enrich the lives we worry about losing. Yes, there are hikers distracted by their smartphones. But there are also birders, old and new, being guided outdoors by smartphone applications like BirdsEye, which puts a birder’s encyclopedia — complete with songs and location-based data — in their pockets. Like most technologies, our new electronic digisphere is made up of good and bad. How we use it is, as always, up to us.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on June 9, 2010, on page A24 of the New York edition.

The future of the tablet computer

The future of the tablet computer

Not written in stone

The iPad is a success, but other tablets may not be

Jun 3rd 2010 | From The Economist print edition

One tablet per model

THE iPad, Apple’s latest gadget, seems to have lived up to its maker’s lofty expectations: 2m of them have been sold in two months, with more presumably to follow after the device’s debut outside America on May 28th. But will the iPad’s success trigger explosive growth for other sorts of “tablet” computers, a category that had previously been seen a sideshow, much as the iPhone did for smart-phones?

The answer appears to be yes, if the proliferation of tablets at Computex, a trade show held this week in Taiwan, is anything to judge by. The exhibition floor was teeming with prototypes, especially from Taiwanese firms such as Acer and Asustek. Dell, an American rival, had unveiled its offering, Streak, a few days earlier. Even Google and One Laptop per Child, a charity, have tablets in the works.

Yet the flurry of activity is deceptive. Not all the computer-makers rushing to produce tablets are convinced they will be a huge success; they are simply hedging their bets after their failure, in many cases, to predict the popularity of netbooks (no-frills laptops), which shot to success in 2008. Tellingly, most of the new devices will not hit the stores before the end of the year, if not later.

It is still unclear what people will use tablets for, says Jeff Orr of ABI Research. They are unlikely to edge out established devices such as televisions, personal computers, games consoles and smart-phones. Most buyers so far have been habitual early-adopters of new gadgets. But tablets may find a niche, he believes, as portable video players and magazine racks.

Much will depend on price. The cheapest iPad costs $499. For tablets to become a mass-market product like DVD players, analysts reckon, the price must fall to $100 at most. Some iPad clones are to be sold at this level, but they lack many of its most attractive features. Fancier tablets could become cheaper, however, if mobile-telecoms operators were to subsidise them, as they do with handsets.

This points to another barrier. To maximise their usefulness, tablets need a fast wireless-internet connection. But so far only a third of American households have Wi-Fi, reckons ABI Research. And mobile-data services are not getting cheaper, at least for heavy users. On June 2nd AT&T ditched its all-you-can-eat plan for iPads, which cost $30 a month, and replaced it with tiered rates.

What is more, tablets are less about hardware than about the software and services that run on them. Users of iPads can already download more than 5,000 applications from Apple’s online store. Such variety is a distant prospect for owners of tablets powered by other operating systems, such as Google’s Android. Yet the more competition there is among operating systems and devices, the more common tablets are likely to become.

Some of the most muscular players in the industry are still in the locker room. Hewlett-Packard is said to have killed the Slate, which was to be based on Microsoft’s Windows, and is now reportedly working on a tablet using an operating system from Palm, the smart-phone maker that HP recently bought. Microsoft will certainly re-enter the fray, although none of its operating systems seems a good fit for tablets. Nokia, too, has yet to unveil its plans.

ABI Research thinks only 8m will be sold worldwide this year and that they will not become a mass-market device before the middle of the decade, by which time it foresees annual sales of 57m. Even this would be less than the number of netbooks expected to be sold this year. And it is not even a third of the global market for smart-phones in 2009.

But tablets may still have a big impact, argues Carolina Milanesi of Gartner, another research firm. Television-makers, for instance, may introduce more interactive features and computer-makers launch app stores in response. All very gratifying for tablet manufacturers, no doubt, but not exactly a money-spinner.