華碩 尋找後PC時代的新生

In 1998, as Russia’s Mir space station travelled hundreds of miles above the earth, Jonney Shih was monitoring its progress with particular interest down on the ground in Taiwan. The chairman of Asus was keen to know how the company’s laptops were faring in the stressful conditions on a 637-day trip into space.

1998年，當俄羅斯的和平號(Mir)空間站在地球上空數百英里處運行時，施崇棠(Jonney Shih)在臺灣密切關注着進展。這位華碩(ASUS)董事長渴望得知，在637天的太空之旅中，該公司的筆記本電腦在壓力環境下表現如何。

By 1997, Asus had been making motherboards for PC manufacturers for eight years, and Mr Shih decided the Taiwanese company needed to make its own computers in order “to make Asus a real brand”. To help establish its reputation, Asus “put reliability as the number-one criterion — we needed to beat all the other machines”, says the 63-year-old, wearing his usual dark suit and open-necked shirt, in a grey armchair at Asus’s Taipei headquarters.

截至1997年，華碩爲個人電腦(PC)廠商製造主板已經8年，施崇棠做出決定，這家臺灣公司需要製造自己的電腦，以“讓華碩成爲一個真正的品牌”。爲了建立聲望，華碩“把可靠性作爲頭號準則——我們需要打敗其他所有的機器，”在華碩臺北總部，現年63歲的施崇棠穿着慣常的黑西裝和開領襯衫，坐在灰色的扶手椅上說道。

So it was a milestone when Asus’s early laptops survived the trip to Mir, unlike those of more established rivals.

因此，不像其他更老牌的競爭對手，華碩早期的筆記本電腦在和平號空間站的太空之旅中倖存下來，那是一個里程碑。

Asus flourished as a consumer-focused business, and alongside Taiwan rival Acer became one of the world’s top-five PC producers. By 2008, with HTC spearheading Google’s launch of the Android smartphone operating system, the island’s consumer electronics industry was a pillar of the economy, with a global heft disproportionate to Taiwan’s population of less than 25m.

作爲一個以消費者爲中心的企業，華碩繁榮發展，和其臺灣競爭對手宏碁(Acer)一起躋身於世界五大個人電腦製造商之列。到2008年，隨着宏達電(HTC)率先採用谷歌(Google)發佈的Android智能手機操作系統，臺灣消費電子產業成爲島內經濟支柱，在全球舉足輕重，遠遠超出臺灣人口規模（不到2500萬）所代表的比例。

Today, however, the outlook looks less bright. Global PC sales last year came in at about 289m units, according to research company Gartner — nearly a fifth below the high point of 2010, as smartphone-focused consumers spurn bulky computers. Since the start of 2011 Acer has racked up cumulative losses of NT$27bn ($836m), with the shrinking overall market compounded by loss of market share to the likes of China’s Lenovo. Acer’s shares have fallen 90 per cent during that period, as have those of HTC, which has been marginalised in the Android smartphone market by South Korea’s Samsung and Chinese rivals.

然而，今天的前景看起來黯淡了一些。根據研究機構高德納(Gartner)的數據，去年全球PC銷售量約爲2.89億臺——比2010年的高位低了近五分之一，緊盯智能手機的消費者摒棄了笨重的電腦。自2011年初以來，宏碁遭遇270億臺幣（合8.36億美元）的累計虧損，在整體市場萎縮的同時，還被中國聯想(Lenovo)這樣的廠商奪走了一部分市場份額。在這段時間裏，宏碁的股價下跌了90%，宏達電的股價表現也同樣悲催，該公司在Android智能手機市場上不敵韓國三星(Samsung)和中國競爭對手。

Asus, however, has weathered the PC decline with small rises in market share and a shift towards more expensive devices, as well as a belated but modestly successful move into smartphones. At about $6bn, its market capitalisation is roughly where it was five years ago, and analysts expect it to report net profit for last year of about $530m. This is slightly higher than the 2010 figure, but nearly a quarter below its record earnings of 2012.

然而，華碩經受住了PC的衰退，市場份額小幅提升，並轉向更昂貴的設備，其進軍智能手機市場雖然較晚，但也小有成功。華碩現在的市值大約爲60億美元，和5年前基本相當。分析師們預計，華碩將報告2015年實現淨利潤約5.3億美元，這略微高於其2010年的業績數據，但比其2012年的創紀錄利潤低了近四分之一。

The contrast with Acer is bittersweet for Mr Shih, who spent his formative years there, culminating in leading its research and development work. When four of his engineers in 1989 started their own “small but beautiful company”, they asked Mr Shih to lead them.

華碩和宏碁的對比讓施崇棠喜憂參半，他在宏碁度過了職業生涯中的關鍵成長期，最終領導宏碁的研發工作。當他手下的4名工程師在1989年自創“小而美的公司”時，他們強烈要求施崇棠來領導他們。

He asked Acer’s founder, Stanley Shih — no relation — for permission. “Acer was in difficulty … finally Stan convinced me to stay,” he says. But he provided financing to the fledgling company, and four years later he joined Asus as chief executive.

施崇棠徵求了宏碁創始人施振榮（Stanley Shih，兩人並無親戚關係）的許可。“當時宏碁很困難……最後施振榮說服了我留下來，”施崇棠說。但他爲羽翼未豐的華碩提供了資金，並在4年後以首席執行官的身份加入了華碩。

Mr Shih recalls instilling a culture of hard work after finding an engineering lab almost empty early one evening: “That’s a crisis, frankly speaking,” he says. He overhauled the hiring policy too, by picking promising graduates en masse from the elite National Taiwan University. Then came the decision to move into consumer electronics, which still makes up the overwhelming majority of Asus’s sales.

施崇棠回憶，有一天華燈初上的時候，他發現一間工程實驗室幾乎已空無一人，於是他在公司內着力打造一種勤奮工作的文化：“坦率地說，那是一場危機，”他表示。他還整改了招聘政策，從精英的國立臺灣大學(NTU)成批挑選有才華的畢業生。接着他作出向消費電子業進軍的決策，現在消費電子依然在華碩的銷售中佔絕大部分。

One factor behind Asus’s resilience in this field, say analysts, has been its pursuit of fresh sizes and configurations of its devices, helping it to secure a strong position in new and relatively high-demand product segments as PC sales languish.

分析師們表示，華碩在該領域的應變能力背後的一個因素是，該公司對產品不斷嘗試新規格和新配置，從而在個人電腦銷售衰退之際在需求相對強勁的新產品領域取得強勢地位。

In 2007 Asus unveiled the Eee PC — the first netbook, or miniature laptop. The innovation was widely copied by rivals, launching a new product category that enjoyed strong demand until Apple’s iPad kick-started the tablet market three years later.

2007年，華碩推出了首款上網本（迷你筆記本電腦）Eee PC。這一創新被競爭對手廣爲效仿，開創了一個需求強勁的新產品類別，直到3年後蘋果(Apple)的iPad開創了平板市場。

Such innovation was the result of a shift in Asus’s culture away from a simple focus on technical performance, says Mr Shih. “To have a complete kind of innovation you need to start from the user desirability.” In 2011, Asus rolled out the Transformer, which can be adjusted for use as either tablet or laptop — another idea soon emulated by companies including Microsoft. In a colourful advertisement for Asus’s latest version, a talking cartoon bird chides a smartphone user: “You’re just making life difficult for yourself!” it says. “Glued to your tiny screens, giving yourself a migraine while you try to write a novel with your thumbs?”

施崇棠表示，這樣的創新是華碩的文化發生轉變，不再只專注於技術性能的結果。“要進行那種徹底的創新，你需要從使用者好感度出發。”2011年，華碩推出了Transformer Book變形筆記本電腦，該產品可以調整，變形爲平板或者筆記本電腦——這個想法很快也被其他公司模仿，包括微軟(Microsoft)。在最新款Transformer Book色彩繽紛的廣告中，一隻會說話的卡通小鳥嘲諷一名智能手機用戶：“是在爽什麼，”小鳥說，“熒幕小不拉幾，失敗。你那又肥又短的手指是要按到啥時。”

Mr Shih similarly defends the PC. “People say the PC is declining, but it only makes the desirability more clear. The PC is for professional, productivity computing,” he says.

施崇棠也爲個人電腦做出了類似的辯護。“人們說個人電腦正在衰退，但這只是使其可取之處更加清晰。個人電腦的用處是專業、高效的運算，”施崇棠說。

However, both the PC and tablet sectors are clearly being cannibalised by larger-screen smartphones. So last year Asus made a jump into smartphones with the ZenFone, whose development team was subject to Mr Shih’s demanding standards. At one point he held a crisis meeting to figure out a way to fit the battery and speaker into the space. “Around midnight or 2 o’clock in the morning, one of the engineers work it out,” Mr Shih says. “If it’s a normal business meeting, I don’t think you can have a breakthrough... if it’s not painful, normally it’s not a hero product.”

然而，個人電腦和平板領域明顯都正在被大屏智能手機侵蝕。因此，去年華碩推出ZenFone智能手機，擠入這個市場。施崇棠用嚴苛的標準要求ZenFone的開發團隊。有一次，施崇棠舉行了一個危機工作會議，以找出將電池和揚聲器放入設計空間的辦法。“大概是在午夜或者凌晨兩點鐘前後，其中一位工程師找到了方法，”施崇棠表示，“如果這只是一場平常的工作會議，我不認爲你能夠取得突破……如果不痛苦，通常它也不會是一款英雄產品。”

The cash resources and business networks created by its PC operation have helped Asus’s smartphone division to modest success in some developing countries: it had 12 per cent of Indonesia’s smartphone market and 7 per cent of Russia’s in the third quarter of 2015, according to Canalys. But Asus is a late entrant, arriving seven years after the iPhone. More , margins have been narrowed by competition from Chinese producers.

華碩PC業務產生的現金資源和商業網絡幫助華碩的智能手機業務在一些發展中國家取得了一定的成功：根據Canalys的數據，2015年第3季度，華碩手機在印尼佔智能手機市場的12%，在俄羅斯佔7%。但華碩在智能手機市場上是個後來者，比iPhone晚了7年。此外，利潤率也因爲來自中國手機廠商的競爭而收窄。

“The final winner sometimes is not the first runner,” Mr Shih insists. Asus predicts its revenue from mobile dev will overtake that from PCs in 2018, and it expects to sell 30m smartphones in 2016, from about 21m last year. This has drawn scepticism from some analysts: Nomura, for example, predicts sales of 22m units in 2016.

“最後的贏家有時並非第一個起跑的人，”施崇棠堅稱。華碩預測其移動設備業務的收入將在2018年超過PC業務，預計將在2016年賣出3000萬部智能手機，而2015年這個數字約爲2100萬部。一些分析師對此表示懷疑：比如，野村(Nomura)預測華碩在2016年的智能手機銷量將達到2200萬部。

Smartphones are only one of the growth areas Mr Shih is targeting, however. Since handing over the chief executive role to Jerry Shen in 2008, he has remained the main public face of the company. But he also has more time to foster product areas aimed at compensating for the slowdown in Asus’s declining main business.

然而，智能手機只是施崇棠瞄準的增長領域之一。自2008年將首席執行官之位交給沈振來(Jerry Shen)以來，施崇棠依然是華碩主要的公開形象。但他也有了更多時間發展旨在補償華碩主營業務下滑的產品領域。

In vocabulary peppered with business school jargon, one of Mr Shih’s favourite words is “megatrend”: in this case, the shift towards the “internet of things”, in which consumers rely on a constellation of networked devices.

施崇棠在講話時經常蹦出商學院術語，他最喜歡的一個詞是“megatrend”（大趨勢）：目前，他指的是朝着“物聯網”轉變的趨勢。在物聯網中，消費者依賴一系列聯網的設備。

Asus is expanding its range of such pr , from smartwatches to a smart television device made for Google, and Mr Shih is overseeing secret projects in robotics and augmented reality technology — a view of the real world embellished with computer-generated effects.

華碩正在擴大此類產品系列，從智能手錶到基於谷歌Google TV平臺的智能電視設備，施崇棠還在監督機器人和增強現實技術方面的祕密項目。後者是指將計算機產生的效果疊加到人的真實世界視覺。

“In the PC era, the box was the centre. Now we have to agree the cloud is the centre,” he says. “I do care a lot about the megatrend. Otherwise you may become irrelevant.”

“在PC時代，機體是中心。現在我們不得不認同，雲端是中心，”他說，“我的確非常關心這一megatrend。否則你可能會變得無關緊要。”