老外又拍了部中國的紀錄片 ！主題竟是諾基亞手機

What went wrong for Nokia? Nokia Mobile was for 14 years the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, a pioneer of the technology that has transformed the world. Now, if anything, it is a mere badge on other people’s operating systems and products, often now relegated to ironic retro designs.

諾基亞是如何衰落的？這個14年蟬聯世界最大生產商的品牌，曾經位於技術尖端，改變了世界。如今卻變成了大家的操作系統或產品上的一個小標識，甚至成爲再度迴歸的笑點。

The prior question, answered equally satisfactorily in BBC4’s The Rise and Fall of Nokia, would be: what went right for Nokia? 

BBC4用《諾基亞的興盛與衰落》（The Rise and Fall of Nokia）完美迴應了更原始的問題：諾基亞是如何盛行起來的？

A pulp mill founded in Finland in 1865, the company wasn’t an obvious contender for global leadership. Its pre-eminence derived partly from one of its hobbyist bosses, Jorma Nieminen, the “father” of the Finnish mobile phone industry, extending his boyhood interest in radios. In Finland there was also a ready demand for this nascent technology, being a sparsely populated nation with relatively few fixed lines. People wanted to make calls when they went to the lake on their boat or stayed in their holiday cottage – or if there were some emergency on the move in their beautiful but inhospitable land. Serendipity.

1865年，芬蘭的一個造紙廠成立，彼時還看不出這家紙廠是全球領導力的有力競爭者。不過紙廠的老闆之一喬曼·納蒙（Jorma Nieminen）是收音機發燒友，年少時癡迷於收音機，後來成爲了芬蘭手機業的“創始人”，紙廠的潛力大概源於此處。因爲芬蘭人口稀疏，固定電話不多，所以對手機有大量需求。人們想在湖上泛舟或是木屋度假時也能打電話，當然，在荒涼而美麗的故土奔波，一旦發生緊急情況，打電話也是首選。真是幸運啊。

By 1972 some 1,600 mobile phones had been manufactured, and 20 employees made these exotic behemoths. These promising machines started to generate interest. The story was told of a chap, rather ahead of his time, who took his family to the zoo for the day but could not bear to be out of contact. So he carried his “phone” – a suitcase with 13kg of primitive electronics – all day around the ape house, through the aquarium, to meet the tapirs … No one rang. 

到1972年，大約有1600部手機面世，由20位員工通力打造出這些奇怪的龐然大物。手機美好的前景激發了大家的興致。但是故事要從一位買主講起。有一天，買主帶着全家去動物園，實在無法忍受失聯狀態，於是他帶上了自己的“手機”——那是一個重達13千克的原始電子箱。那一天他去看了猴子、參觀了水族館、貘。並沒有人給他打電話。

No matter for Nokia. They pressed on. They were the first to offer a commercial handset for text messages; the first to offer, albeit crude, web access; the first to allow users to download ringtones (Crazy Frog); first to make a phone a calendar and a calculator; and the first to fit a game (Snake – remember that?), thus turning the mobile phone from a device to raise productivity into one that lowers it. 

 當時還沒諾基亞什麼事兒。這20位員工繼續砥礪前行，他們首創了能發短信的商業手機、簡單粗暴的網站、鈴聲（瘋狂青蛙）下載功能、手機日曆、手機計算器、手機遊戲（還記得貪吃蛇嗎？）。由此，手機從一個激發生產力的工具變成了解放人類的電子科技。

Like Lego, Ikea and Volvo, Nokia was infused with a proud and distinct Nordic business culture – open, cooperative, creative and technically driven. But that culture did not survive the growth of Nokia into a vast multinational company; one that even had a phone factory in China that made not a single phone, forgotten by HQ back in Finland, built just to keep the local provincial Chinese authorities happy.  

諾基亞和樂高、宜家、沃爾沃一樣，具有自豪別緻的日耳曼企業文化，它開放、合作、創新，同時以科技爲驅動力發展。但是這樣的文化並沒有使諾基亞變成跨國企業。中國的諾基亞生產工廠不止製造手機，它的存在是爲了取悅當地官僚，也早已被芬蘭總部遺忘。

Like an old mobile with a dodgy keypad, the culture had malfunctioned. According to insiders, people were recruited who “cared only about the money, [share] options, company cars and wages”. Teams no longer collaborated instinctively. One phone had buttons that didn’t do anything because the designers hadn’t spoken to the marketeers. Nokia’s slogan of “Connecting People” turned ironic. 

諾基亞的企業文化如同一部配有滑稽鍵盤的老手機一樣，就此崩塌。據內部人員透露，員工都是“只在乎錢、股份、公司的車和薪水”的人。不再有人自發組隊合作。設計者和市場人員在手機上市前從未進行溝通，然後手機上就出現了一些毫無意義的按鈕，。諾基亞的口號“Connecting People（人人相聯）”成爲了笑話。

None of that would have mattered so much if the Apple iPhone hadn’t arrived on 9 January 2007. But it did; computing and phone techs converging. Terrified, Nokia ordered dozens in. One exec took his iPhone home. When his five-year-old daughter asked daddy, “Can I keep the magic phone under the pillow?” he knew they’d had it. 

要是2007年1月9日蘋果公司的iPhone未曾面世，諾基亞也不會因爲內部的這點小事就出現問題。但是時光無法倒流。計算和手機技術結合起來。諾基亞員工在恐懼中購入了iPhone。一位高管把蘋果手機帶回家，五歲的女兒問他：“爸爸，我能把這個魔法手機藏在枕頭底下嗎？”這位高管知道，蘋果早就具備高端技術了。

So there was nothing predetermined about the fall, nor the ascent, of Nokia. There were known external forces as well as a varying quality of management at work – but also sheer luck, on the way up and on the way down. In other words, just as mafia bosses are said to apologise before they “whack” a competitor, Nokia’s decline at the hands of Apple was “just business”. A shame, all the same.

沒有什麼能預示諾基亞衰落和興起。外部阻力和各種管理問題衆所周知，運氣也是諾基亞起起伏伏的原因之一。或者就像黑幫老大會在“打擊”同行前先道歉一樣，諾基亞敗在蘋果手裏，也不過是“同行競爭”。生意失敗嘛，大同小異罷了。

（翻譯：阿忙）