Phone a friend

飞雪寒冰

“I am an optimist,” declared Nokia’s new chief executive on Friday as he bet the farm on an alliance with Microsoft. But investors were – justifiably – in a darker mood. The phonemaker’s shares, which have already lost two-thirds of their value since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, fell another 14 per cent after Stephen Elop announced the deal.
诺基亚(Nokia)新任首席执行官周五宣称自己是一个乐观主义者——他孤注一掷地将所有赌注押在与微软(Microsoft)的合作上。但投资者的看法则要悲观一些，而这也有情可原。自苹果(Apple) 2007年推出iPhone以来，诺基亚市值已缩水三分之二。而就在斯蒂芬•埃洛普(Stephen Elop)宣布与微软合作的交易后，诺基亚股价又下跌了14%。

On paper, teaming up with Microsoft to produce good smartphones makes good sense: Nokia has a poor operating system but vast scale, while Microsoft has a great operating system but no scale. Yet it requires a leap of faith to believe the two dinosaurs will become more innovative and speedy by working together – let alone as nimble as Google or Apple.
从理论上讲，与微软联手生产高质智能手机的可行性非常高：诺基亚的操作系统比较糟糕，但市场规模庞大；微软拥有出色的操作系统，却毫无规模可言。但就此认定两大巨头合作后的创新能力和速度肯定将有所提升，则实在缺乏说服力——更别指望它们变得像谷歌(Google)或苹果一样灵敏。

飞雪寒冰

On these numbers, Nokia’s shares are still expensive at about 18 times this year’s earnings. The shares of RIM, another smartphone competitor with a doubtful future, trade at almost half that. Nokia’s path is certain pain followed by an uncertain future. Investors are still not pessimistic enough.
按照这些数字推算，诺基亚目前的市盈率大概为18倍，依然很高。RIM——另一家前途未卜的智能手机竞争对手——的市盈率几乎只有它的一半。诺基亚的前进道路上必然荆棘丛生，前途渺茫。投资者还应该再悲观些。

飞雪寒冰

Nokia also got the worse end of the deal. It will not have the exclusive right to Microsoft’s operating system and will have to pay royalties to use it (whereas it could have used Google’s Android for free).
而且，诺基亚是此笔交易中吃亏的一方。它不仅拿不到微软操作系统的专有权，还必须为其使用支付版税（而它本可以免费使用谷歌的Android系统）。

Some numbers would have given investors something to hold on to, but Nokia left them largely out at sea: it said the transition would take until 2013 and refused to give financial guidance for the intervening years. They are sure to be ugly. Nokia will keep selling phones that use its proprietary and unloved software, but these are likely to lose market share even faster now that they are guaranteed obsolescence. Credit Suisse thinks Nokia’s smartphone market share could fall from almost 30 per cent to 15-odd per cent during the next year alone, which would reduce earnings from