The debut of the iPhone 5 last year was met with skeptical reviews, claims the company had lost its magic touch — and a record opening weekend with 5 million phones sold. Fast forward to 2013 and the debut of the iPhone 5S, with those same skeptical reviews and harangues about an innovation drought. Yet, lo and behold, the company goes and sells 9 million iPhones the first weekend they’re on sale. The analysts are delighted, right? No. Instead they channel their inner Gordon Ramsay and shout a collective, “Not good enough!”
去年，iPhone 5发布之时遇到了质疑之声，还有诸如“苹果（Apple）已经失去魔力”这样的宣言，但随之而来的就是iPhone 5在首个周末卖出500万部的销量记录。时至今日，iPhone 5S亮相世人眼前，同样的怀疑论调以及关于苹果在创新方面已经黔驴技穷的议论卷土重来。分析师们高兴了，对吗？不，他们反而拿出蕴藏的高登•拉姆齐（Gordon Ramsay，英国名厨，以在主持节目中脾气火爆而闻名——译注）那种劲头，齐声大喊，“还不够好！”
Apple coverage is you have, on the one hand, a loyal core of writers who follow the company closely. While they are frequently critical of Apple, those that dislike the company, only see the praise. This makes those writers easy targets for the Apple haters, whether they’re from broader sites like Cnet and BGR or Apple-focused ones, like AppleInsider and DaringFireball.
关于苹果公司的报道非常奇怪地一分为二。一方面，一批忠实的记者对该公司进行着密切的追踪报道。尽管他们也经常批评苹果，但那些不喜欢该公司的人只看到了他们的溢美之词。无论这些记者是来自如Cnet和BGR等更为综合的科技网站，还是像AppleInsider和DaringFireball等专门报道苹果新闻的网站，这都使得他们很容易成为那些不看好苹果的人的攻击目标。
But on the other hand, you have much of the mainstream technology and financial media, which has a difficult time finding much of anything positive to say about Apple on a day-to-day basis. Witness this nonsense: “ Why Record iPhone Sales Might Be Rotten For Apple” over at ABC or “ Paring Apple’s Big iPhone Weekend” by the normally sober Rolfe Winkler at the WSJ.
但另一方面又有许多主流科技和金融媒体，它们很难每天找出多少苹果的正面新闻来报道。看看这些无稽之谈吧：ABC网站刊登了《为什么iPhone销售创纪录对苹果来说可能不是好事》；《华尔街日报》素日里头脑冷静的撰稿人罗尔夫•温克勒（Rolfe Winkler）写了一篇《剥掉新iPhone首发周末大卖的外衣》。
Apple just nearly doubled its record product launch and the bulk of the coverage you’ll find in major news outlets is basically: “ iPhone Maker Blows It — Again.” Yes, there are differences this time around: Two new phones instead of one. The iPhone launched in more countries at once and on more carriers. But none of this was unexpected.
苹果公司几乎将它的产品发布销售纪录翻了一番，而主要新闻媒体上的大量报道基本都在说：“iPhone手机制造商再次搞砸了。”不错，这一次有所不同：苹果一下发布了两款手机；新款iPhone手机的首发国家阵容以及合作运营商阵容进一步扩大。但以上无一不在我们的意料之中。
What was unexpected was the magnitude of the sales. “We had been expecting 5-6 million units, ” said Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. “When I saw that 9-million number, I basically fell out of my chair, ” he told Bloomberg. Munster last year predicted a launch weekend of 10 million phones, twice the actual result. The real surprise is that he’s still surprised by his ability to miss by millions.
让我们意想不到的是销售规模。“我们曾预计销量会在500万到600万部之间。”投资银行派杰（Piper Jaffray）的分析师吉恩•蒙斯特（Gene Munster）说道。“当我看到900万这个数字时，我差点从椅子上跌落下来。”他在接受彭博社采访时表示。去年，蒙斯特曾经预测iPhone 5的首发周末销量为1,000万部，结果比实际销量高了一倍。真正令人吃惊的是，他这次的预测又有几百万的误差。
Munster and other analysts have taken great pains to explain that 9 million sales isn’t really 9 million sales, that Apple is somehow stuffing the channel with phones. But Apple doesn’t work that way. All the phones in its own retail stores only count as sales when someone buys them; whatever is in inventory isn’t booked as sold. It’s certainly true that third-party retailers have some stock of the new iPhone 5c that Apple does consider sold, but not much of the 5s.
蒙斯特和其他分析师们花了很大气力去解释900万销售这一数字并非真的指卖出了900万部iPhone手机，而是苹果公司正以某种方式大举进行渠道填充（channel stuffing）。但这可不是苹果公司的一贯作风。苹果自有门店中的所有手机只有当被买走时才计入销售数字；库存并不计入销量。当然，第三方零售商手中的一些iPhone 5C库存的确被苹果视为已售产品，但对于供不应求的iPhone 5S来说这种情况为数不多。
And the cheaper 5c is new territory for Apple. It’s still likely to be the volume product, but was unlikely to have a big launch, given that the sole meaningful new feature was a colored plastic shell. Instead, the 5c is the phone that’s going to sell by the millions over the coming months and quarters. In fact, it’s probably safe to predict that by the end of the month, the 5c will exceed the sales of Motorola’s much hyped (and very interesting) Moto X phone for all of 2013.
相对便宜的iPhone 5C是苹果踏入的一个新领域。iPhone 5C仍然极有可能成为高销量产品，但考虑到该产品唯一有意义的新特点就是其彩色的塑料外壳，它不可能拥有一个盛大的发布会。相反，iPhone 5C将在未来数月以及数个季度中售出几百万部。实际上，可以有把握地预测：到本月底时，iPhone 5C的销售表现将超过摩托罗拉日前大力宣传的（而且非常有意思的）Moto X手机，并且在年内保持领先。
Morgan Stanley, for example, thinks Apple sold about 3 million of the iPhone 5s among the 9 million and could have sold twice that — demand was that high. She also believes just 2 million of the phones represent inventory for third-party retailers, at most 2 weeks worth. Of course, her comments were reported by Cnet, not the WSJ.
理性的分析还是存在的，但你将不得不到“力挺苹果”的媒体那里去寻找。例如，摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）分析师凯蒂•赫伯缇（Katy Huberty）认为，苹果900万的iPhone销量中iPhone 5S占到了约300万，而且iPhone 5S的销量本可以比现在翻一番，因为需求非常之大。她还认为，其中只有200万是第三方零售商的库存，而且至多两周就能消化。当然，报道这些的是看好苹果的Cnet网站，而非《华尔街日报》。
Here’s what no one reported: In the first full quarter after the launch of iPhone 5, Apple sold 48 million iPhones. That compares to 37 million in the closest comparable quarter for the iPhone 4S (4 million opening weekend) and 14 million for the iPhone 4 (which sold just 1.7 million at launch). You don’t need to work on Wall Street to quickly see that the multiple between launch results and the next quarter’s iPhone sales has historically been 8-9 times (actually a bit more recently).
还有一点没有被报道：在iPhone 5发布后的第一个季度，苹果卖出了4,800万部iPhone手机。在最为接近的可比季度中，iPhone 4S（首周末销量为400万部）那时售出了3,700万部，而iPhone 4（首周末销量仅为170万部）当初只售出了1,400万部。你不必是华尔街专业人士就能迅速看出：首个周末的销售成绩历来是接下来一个季度手机销量的八分之一到九分之一（实际上近来相差得更大一些）。
If we extrapolated that out using the 9 million figure, Apple would sell perhaps 80 million iPhones next quarter (the one ending December), which would obliterate the record set last year. Even if you take the numbers down and decide that “real sales” were much lower or that by opening with China, Apple pulled sales forward, it’s difficult to see how this doesn’t presage a fairly gigantic holiday season for iPhone sales.
如果我们用900万这个数字进行推断，下一季度（截止到今年12月）苹果可能将会卖出8,000万部iPhone手机，这将刷新去年创下的纪录。即便你把数字拉下来——认为“真正的销量”要低得多，或者苹果通过在中国同步发售从而预支了一部分销量，也很难由此否定iPhone手机将在假日季掀起火爆销售热潮的预期。
Now, to be sure, that’s all speculative based on a single data point set against limited history. But compared to wild claims that Apple has manipulated the narrative for whatever purpose to make things seem more bullish than they are? Well, hardly. The company, you see, simultaneously filed an 8-K with the SEC reiterating its financial guidance for the current quarter. No hype, just a “we’re going to do the high end of what we said a few months ago.” (When I looked at that guidance after last quarter’s earnings call, it computed to around $8 per share of earnings.)
诚然，这些都是基于单个数据和有限历史记录的推测。但总好过于那些狂妄的臆断吧？——他们说苹果有意操纵数据让情况看起来比实际上更为乐观。嗯，几乎不会。你瞧，苹果公司同时向美国证券交易委员会（SEC）递交了8-K文件，重申了对于当前季度的财务指导。没有吹得天花乱坠，苹果只是说“我们将最大程度地去实现几个月前所订立的目标。”（查看苹果上一财季盈利电话会议结束后发布的盈利指导，我发现每股盈利为8美元左右。）
For what it’s worth, the legitimate criticism of Apple is that earnings have gone backwards lately. While iPhone sales over the past four quarters have totaled 143 million, a reduction in margins has led to numbers like $7.47 per share last quarter against $9.32 in the prior year. Flat revenues overall, a volatile iPad business and declines in both gross margins and average selling prices have made it very challenging for Apple to show rising profits.
不管怎样，对于苹果公司的一个合理批评是，近来盈利有所下滑。尽管过去四个季度iPhone手机的销售额共计达到了1.43亿美元，但利润率的缩减导致上一季的每股盈利仅为7.47美元，而前年的同比数字为9.32美元。营收总体增长平缓、iPad业务出现波动以及毛利率和平均销售价格的双双下滑使得实现利润上涨对苹果来说颇具挑战。
That’s the backdrop against which the company decided to launch two new iPhones. Smartphones are more than half Apple’s revenue and the company’s highest-margin products. Even the new 5c promises to be highly lucrative for Apple, with the 32GB model very likely the most profitable iPhone ever. It will be fair to judge anything less than 170 million iPhones over these next 4 quarters as an utter failure of Apple’s strategy. The company will have neither grown market share, nor profits and, in fact, will see the iPhone shrink perilously close to 10% of the worldwide market.
这就是苹果公司决定同时推出两款新iPhone手机的背景。智能手机占到了苹果公司营收的一半以上，而且是利润率最高的苹果产品。新款iPhone 5C甚至有望为苹果带来高额利润，而其32GB版极有可能成为史上最赚钱iPhone手机。可以说，在未来四个季度里iPhone手机的销量如若低于1.7亿部则是苹果战略彻头彻尾的失败：苹果公司将既不会看到市场份额增长也不会看到利润提高，实际上，iPhone手机的全球市场份额将有缩减到接近10%的危险。
But the opening weekend figures, in fact, suggest that Apple’s plan is working exactly as it hoped. Already, 200 million iOS devices have upgraded to iOS 7, a breathtaking number that’s twice as many as picked up iOS 6 last year. (In fairness, there are more devices to upgrade.) And, Apple can still get the faithful out to buy its new phone, even waiting on lines for days to be first. And while it didn’t deliver an inexpensive phone by global standards, the presence of the 5c clearly is already expanding the market for iPhone buyers. How else to explain such a huge bump in opening-weekend sales?
但事实上，新款iPhone手机的首周末销售数字显示，苹果的计划正恰如它所希望的那样推进。现在升级到iOS 7操作系统的苹果设备已有2亿台，这一惊人的数字是去年iOS 6升级设备数量的两倍。（公道地说，未来还会有更多的设备升级。）而且，苹果公司仍能让其忠实拥趸前来购买新手机，甚至情愿排队数日只为能够第一个买到。尽管苹果公司没能推出一款符合全球标准的便宜手机，但iPhone 5C已经扩大了苹果手机的用户市场。否则要怎么解释自发布以来首个周末的如此强劲的销售表现呢？
Tim Cook and Apple management don’t talk sales goals, but I imagine somewhere in Cupertino they’re looking at a figure that many a Hollywood blockbuster shoots for these days — 200 million. If that many iPhones are sold, it would mean 40% growth in units and likely more than enough in profits to send the stock moving back upwards. Just don’t expect it to please the analysts, who’ll surely tell you why it’s not good news.
蒂姆•库克（Tim Cook）和苹果管理层没有谈论销售目标，但我猜想，他们正在库比蒂诺（苹果公司所在地——译注）的某处，悄悄地瞄上2亿美元这个许多好莱坞大片都梦寐以求的销售数字。如果iPhone手机的销售额达到这个数字，这将意味着销量届时增长40%，而且所带来的利润早就足以让苹果股价重新上涨。不过不要指望这能够取悦那些分析师，他们一定会告诉你为什么这不是一个好消息。
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