甩掉手機諾基亞向前看----中壢英文補習班－金學堂英語的部落格

Shedding Its Handsets,
Nokia Looks Forward

【By MARK SCOTT and BRIAN X. CHEN／田思怡譯】

Nokia, which began
making rubber boots for Finnish workmen 150 years ago and was an innovative
leader of the cellphone industry in the 1990s, is once again evolving.

While Microsoft is
acquiring Nokia’s handset business, the Finnish company is holding on to its profitable
networking and mapping businesses.

“There’s a lot of emotion involved in this move,” Timo Ihamuotila, Nokia’s chief financial officer, said , adding, “ It’s hard, but Finland will have two strong
technology companies that result from this deal.”

Nokia focused on
cellphones in the 1990s after facing financial difficulties . By the end of the
1990s, it was the world’s largest cellphone maker. It attained a market value of $250 billion.
Yet a failure to develop a smartphone to rival Apple’s iPhone and Android-based devices from
Samsung Electronics collapsed Nokia’s market share from 30 percent in 2009 to
less than 4 percent last year, according to the research firm Gartner. In 2013,
Samsung became the largest phone maker.

The new Nokia is
flush with Microsoft money and could be well positioned to compete. Nokia’s networking business, which includes
equipment it sells to telecom operators to run their wireless networks, brings
in most of the company’s annual revenue.

Nokia’s maps technology has a valuable global
database of geographical information. Called Here, it can be licensed to other
companies that want to build products and services around maps.

“It’s a very odd mix at this point,” said Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst . “There’s no other company that combines heavy
network infrastructure with what’s basically a pure data and software asset,
and there’s very little synergy between the two.”

Nokia’s mobile infrastructure business, which
began as a joint venture with Siemens, generates around 85 percent of the
company’s annual $18.4 billion in revenues. Nokia acquired the 50 percent stake
in Nokia Siemens Networks earlier this year for $2.2 billion.

It is expected to
compete against telecom suppliers like Ericsson of Sweden and Huawei and ZTE of
China to win contracts from the world’s largest cellphone operators .

By the time the
next generation of wireless technology arrives and vendors are upgrading their
equipment, Nokia, now a smaller company, will be in a tough spot.

It may have some
success in the United States and Europe, where the governments are wary of
Huawei and ZTE because of security concerns about Chinese governmentsponsored
spying. But it will have to invest heavily to challenge Ericsson, said Tero
Kuittinen, an analyst.

Nokia plans to
sell GPS and entertainment services, and it has retained its research and
development facilities and patent portfolio, with plans to develop new products
. Its mapping component generates around $1.3 billion in annual revenue.

The loss of Nokia’s phone business creates a void for Finland
, said Mr. Kuittinen . Finnish universities offered courses in mathematics and
software engineering with Nokia in mind as a future employer.

Now, they may look
to other countries, like the United States, if they want to get into the
business of making mobile software, one of the most popular technology sectors
for engineers.

“The industry just vanished,” Mr. Kuittinen said, “and this is not something that happens very
often.”

中譯

諾基亞150年前以為芬蘭工人製造橡膠靴起家，1990年代是行動電話產業創新的領袖，現在又再度進化。

微軟將收購諾基亞手機事業，這家芬蘭公司仍保住賺錢的網路和地圖事業。

諾基亞財務長伊哈莫蒂拉說：「此舉摻雜了很多情緒。」他接著說：「這很艱難，但因為這項交易，芬蘭將擁有兩家很強的科技公司。」

1990年代諾基亞在面臨財政困難後，專注於手機事業。到了1990年代末，它是全球最大手機製造商，市值高達2500億美元。然而，產業研究公司顧能指出，諾基亞未能發展出可與蘋果的iPhone和三星電子的Android作業系統裝置匹敵的智慧型手機，以致市占率崩跌，從2009年的30%，掉到去年的不到4%。2013年，三星成為最大的手機製造商。