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商業(yè)報(bào)道
BlackBerry
黑莓
Only thorns
只有荊棘光環(huán)
For a fallen star of the smartphone industry, things go from bad to worse
智能手機(jī)行業(yè)一個(gè)明星的倒下，每況愈下
THE signs do not look good.
形勢不妙。
On November 4th, six weeks after BlackBerry said that its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial, wanted to take the ailing Canadian smartphone-maker private for 4.7 billion in cash, the sale was called off.
11月4日，黑莓表示在其最大股東費(fèi)爾法克斯金融想趁疲弱的加拿大智能手機(jī)市場套現(xiàn)4.7億美元現(xiàn)金的六周后，這個(gè)出售計(jì)劃取消了。
BlackBerry instead declared that it would raise 1 billion in debt, convertible into 16% of its shares.
黑莓用16％的可轉(zhuǎn)換股份取代發(fā)行10億美元的債務(wù)。
Fairfax, a Toronto holding company that focuses on insurance but owns 10% of BlackBerry, is taking a quarter of the issue. Barbara Stymiest, who chairs BlackBerry's board, called this a significant vote of confidence in BlackBerry and its future.
費(fèi)爾法克斯是多倫多一家控股公司，在這次交易中占了四分之一，其主要從事保險(xiǎn)業(yè)務(wù)，擁有10％的黑莓股份。黑莓的董事會(huì)主席芭芭拉Stymiest把這項(xiàng)交易稱為對(duì)黑莓和其未來的一個(gè)重大的信任投票。
The stockmarket called it a flop the share price, already a fraction of what it once was, fell by 16%.
股市把它稱為翻牌：股價(jià)同比下降了16％，已經(jīng)跌倒只有以前的一小部分了。
Thus BlackBerry ended a review of strategic alternatives with no visible alternative strategy—and no chief executive.
沒有明顯的替代策略也沒有首席執(zhí)行官，因此黑莓結(jié)束了重新審視戰(zhàn)略選擇。
Thorsten Heins, its boss since January 2012, was unseated.
自2012年1月，老板索斯藤海因斯被剝奪了權(quán)利。
He brought a much-delayed operating system, BlackBerry 10, to market, but this will not make much difference.
他為市場帶來了已經(jīng)被拖延很久的黑莓10操作系統(tǒng)，但這卻沒有太大不同。
Although lots of people still carry BlackBerrys, not many of those devices are new.
雖然很多人仍然在使用黑莓手機(jī)并不多，但是用新機(jī)的不多。
BlackBerrys have not only been squished by Apple's iPhone and by Android devices; they are also being outsold by phones with Microsoft's Windows.
黑莓不僅被蘋果的iPhone擠壓和而且還有Android設(shè)備的競爭，他們還在出售搭載windows 操作系統(tǒng)的手機(jī)。
In its latest quarter BlackBerry lost 965m, mostly because of a write-down of unsold phones.
在最新的季度黑莓虧損9.65億美元，主要是因?yàn)槭謾C(jī)積壓。
Last month it made its BBM instant-message service available as an iPhone and Android app.
上個(gè)月，它推出了BBM即時(shí)消息服務(wù)為iPhone和Android提供應(yīng)用程序。
Mr Heins has a temporary replacement John Chen, the former head of Sybase, a software company that he knocked back into shape before selling it to, of Germany,in 2010.
海因斯先生被臨時(shí)撤換為賽貝斯的前負(fù)責(zé)人陳約翰，在2010年出售給德國之前他將SAP這家軟件公司扭虧為盈。
Once a permanent chief executive is found , Mr Chen will stay as executive chairman.
一旦一個(gè)永久性的首席執(zhí)行官被發(fā)現(xiàn)，陳先生將出任執(zhí)行董事長。
It is not yet clear whether his background in software is a clue to BlackBerry's future.
目前尚不清楚他的軟件方面的背景對(duì)黑莓是不是一個(gè)有利的因素。
He seems keen to keep selling handsets.
他似乎熱衷于手機(jī)的銷售。
Roberta Cozza of Gartner, a research firm, thinks BlackBerry should become a niche player, focusing on applications and services for companies to which secure communication is especially important.
咨詢公司Gartner的羅伯塔·科扎認(rèn)為黑莓應(yīng)該成為一個(gè)合適的運(yùn)動(dòng)員，把重點(diǎn)放在對(duì)企業(yè)特別重要的應(yīng)用和服務(wù)上。
I don't think their priority should be hardware at all, Ms Cozza says.
科扎女士說：我不認(rèn)為他們的當(dāng)務(wù)之急是把心思放在硬件上。
Mr Chen told Reuters that at Sybase he had seen the same movie before. Canadians also know the story.
陳先生告訴路透社說，在賽貝斯之前看到了同樣的電影。
The version they saw involved Nortel Networks, a telecoms-equipment company that was heading for oblivion when Research In Motion (as BlackBerry used to be called) was on the rise.
加拿大人也知道這個(gè)故事。他們說的是北電網(wǎng)絡(luò)，在Research In Motion公司上升時(shí)被遺忘的一家通信設(shè)備公司。
Nortel too was a high-tech source of national pride.
北電也是一個(gè)讓國家自豪的高科技公司。
It also brought in a turnaround specialist when its fortunes darkened.
它在前景黯淡時(shí)還轉(zhuǎn)虧為盈。
Alas, the ending was unhappy it went bankrupt in 2009, albeit bequeathing a pile of patents worth billions.
唉，結(jié)局不太好：它在2009年破產(chǎn)，雖然遺贈(zèng)一堆價(jià)值數(shù)十億美元的專利。
The demise of Nortel hit the Canadian psyche very hard and the same thing would happen if BlackBerry failed, says Don Drummond, a former senior civil servant.
前高級(jí)公務(wù)員唐·德拉蒙德說 北電的消亡給加拿大帶來很大的心理沖擊，如果黑莓失敗就會(huì)發(fā)生同樣的事情。
It is no comfort that others in the cruelly Darwinian smartphone business have also begun to look like wounded gazelles.
其他公司在這殘酷的達(dá)爾文式的智能手機(jī)業(yè)務(wù)上也開始看起來像受傷的羚羊一樣不舒適。
On November 5th Taiwan's HTC reported its first quarterly loss.
11月5日臺(tái)灣的宏達(dá)披露了第一季度的虧損。
It added that sales in the first ten months of 2013, at NT175.5 billion, were down by 29% from a year earlier and by 57% from 2011, when HTC was briefly the biggest seller of smartphones in America.
補(bǔ)充了2013前10個(gè)月的銷售業(yè)NT1755億，同比下降29％，與2011年比下降57％，那時(shí)HTC是美國最大的智能手機(jī)賣家。
HTC has made mistakes, but its chief problem has been having Samsung, with its scale and marketing clout, as a competitor in Android phones.
HTC曾經(jīng)犯過錯(cuò)誤，但其主要問題是三星的規(guī)模和市場影響力，Android手機(jī)的競爭對(duì)手。
A third national phone champion, Nokia of Finland, has sold its device division to Microsoft.
銷售量排第三的芬蘭諾基亞將其設(shè)備部門出售給微軟。
The other two are battling on alone, HTC apparently out of choice—its chairwoman says it is not for sale—but BlackBerry out of necessity.
其他兩個(gè)則在單獨(dú)作戰(zhàn)，其董事長說HTC是出于自己的選擇不打算出售，但對(duì)黑莓來說是必要的。
Its shareholders will be praying that Mr Chen can direct a sequel to Sybase, not Nortel.
它的股東只能祈禱，陳先生可以再續(xù)賽貝斯而不是北電。
