在库克的带领下，苹果公司成为最赚钱的公司

苹果肯定会衰落，即使速度很慢。十年前，当蒂姆·库克(tim Cook)从联合创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)手中接过苹果掌舵的时候

本文选自the Economist 2021-08-23，约7500字

the APPLE will surely fall, even if ever so slowly. When Tim Cook took the helm from Steve Jobs, the firm’s co-founder, a decade ago, even the most boosterish Apple fanboys worried that the company was destined to decline. Without Apple’s original Willie Wonka, the digital chocolate factory was about to be run by an automaton who made his career organising global supply chains and scrutinising spreadsheets. How could someone with so little dazzle inspire Apple employees to continue creating “insanely great” products, in Jobs’s famous formulation?

苹果肯定会衰落，即使速度很慢。十年前，当蒂姆·库克(tim Cook)从联合创始人史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)手中接过苹果掌舵的时候，就连最狂热的苹果粉丝也担心公司注定会衰落。没有了苹果(Apple)最初的威利?旺卡(Willie Wonka)，这家数字巧克力工厂将由一个职业生涯都在组织全球供应链和审查电子表格的机械式人来掌管。一个如此没有闪光点的人怎么能激励苹果员工继续创造乔布斯著名的“疯狂伟大”产品呢？

it turned out Mr Cook could. As he celebrates his tenth anniversary as Apple’s boss on August 24th, no one is likely to make a peep. And for good reason. He has staged what is arguably the greatest succession success in tech, an industry littered with managers who failed in the effort to follow in the founders’ footsteps. In fact, in pure financial terms, he has been a far more successful chief executive than the late Jobs, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer six weeks after stepping down.

事实证明，库克可以。8月24日，当他庆祝自己担任苹果老板十周年时，没有人会有任何反应。这是有原因的。在科技行业，很多经理人未能追随创始人的脚步，但他却上演了一场可以说是最伟大的成功接班。事实上，纯粹从财务角度来看，他是一位远比已故乔布斯更成功的首席执行官。乔布斯在卸任六周后因胰腺癌去世。

no CEO in history has created as much total shareholder value as Mr Cook (see chart 1). When he took over the company had a market value of $349bn. Today it is worth $2.5trn (see chart 2), more than any other listed firm ever. Under his aegis annual sales surged from $108bn in 2011 to $274bn last year (see chart 3). Net profit more than doubled to $57bn, overtaking Saudi Aramco’s oil-fuelled earnings and turning Apple into the world’s most profitable company. Less widely noticed, during his tenure the “Apple economy”—its annual revenue plus everything other companies make on one of its platforms—has grown sevenfold to more than $1trn.

历史上没有哪位ceo创造的股东总价值能与库克相提并论(见表1)。当他接手苹果时，苹果的市值为3490亿美元。如今，它的市值为2.5万亿美元(见表2)，超过了以往任何一家上市公司。在他的支持下，苹果的年销售额从2011年的1080亿美元飙升至去年的2740亿美元(见

given such achievements, Mr Cook could have retired amid gushing tributes around now (and with a spot in the billionaire club). Instead, he is likely to stick around at least until 2025, when his current stock grant will fully vest. This in turn raises the question of how long he can keep Apple on its stratospheric trajectory. The short answer is that it will be much harder than in his first decade. Many of the global tailwinds that have lifted Apple to such dizzying heights are now reversing.

考虑到这些成就，库克现在本可以在众人的溢美之词中退休(并在亿万富翁俱乐部占有一席之地)。相反，他可能至少会留任到2025年，届时他目前的股票授予权将全部兑现。这反过来又提出了一个问题:他能让苹果保持在辉煌轨道上多久?简而言之，这将比他的前十年更加艰难。现在许多将苹果提升到如此令人目眩的高度的全球推动力正在逆转。

for a longer answer it helps to understand what Mr Cook got so right. Besides being an exceptional manager, he proved adept at harnessing the forces that have powered the tech industry—and with it the global economy—in the 2010s.

对于一个更长期的答案，了解库克先生做得如此正确是有帮助的。除了作为一名出色的管理者外，事实证明，他善于驾驭推动科技行业以及2010年代全球经济的各种力量。

the first of these was the mobile-led digitisation of life. To satisfy the world’s voracious appetite for mobile computing, he kept pushing for constant improvement of the iPhone. Whereas the iPhone 4s, announced shortly after he became chief executive, was still essentially a souped-up mobile phone, the iPhone 13, expected to be launched in September, will be a hand-sized supercomputer with a processor nearly 5,000% faster. Even Apple’s Watch and AirPods, the main new products since he took over, can be seen as extensions of the mighty iPhone. More than a billion of Apple’s smartphones are now in use globally, one for every seven earthlings.

首先是手机引领的数字化生活。为了满足世界对移动计算的巨大需求，他不断推动iphone的改进。在他成为首席执行官后不久发布的iphone 4s本质上仍是一款升级版手机，而预计将于9月发布的iPhone 13将是一款手掌大的超级计算机，处理器速度快了近5000%。即便是苹果的手表和AirPods，这些他上任以来的主要新产品，也可以被视为强大的iPhone的延伸。目前全球有超过10亿部苹果智能手机在使用，每七个地球人就有一部。

another force Mr Cook has deftly harnessed is globalisation, in particular the rise of China. Even before he took over from Jobs, he was instrumental in outsourcing assembly of Apple’s devices there. Its biggest contract manufacturer, Foxconn, now employs about 1m people in China. Most of them assemble iGadgets. Untold numbers work for suppliers of other components. And besides using China as a factory, Mr Cook saw its potential as a market—now Apple’s biggest after America and Europe, generating 19% of revenue and, possibly, a bigger share of profits.

库克巧妙利用的另一股力量是全球化，尤其是中国的崛起。甚至在他接替乔布斯之前，他就在苹果设备的外包组装方面发挥了重要作用。其最大的代工制造商富士康(Foxconn)目前在中国雇佣了约100万名员工。他们中的大多数人组装电子设备。不计其数的人为其他零部件供应商工作。除了把中国作为工厂，库克先生还看到了中国市场的潜力，现在中国是苹果仅次于美国和欧洲的最大市场，能为苹果带来19%的收入，可能还会带来更大的利润份额。

mr Cook’s third coup was understanding the importance of network effects—the economic mechanism in digital markets which makes big businesses even bigger. That is something that eluded even Jobs, who was ambivalent about the iPhone’s app store. By contrast, Mr Cook doubled down on the digital “flywheel”: the app store attracted more app makers, which attracted more users, which attracted even more developers and so on—until it became the world’s foremost digital marketplace by revenues. Today it hosts nearly 2m apps, which facilitated $643bn in billings and sales in 2020 for app developers, according to a study sponsored by Apple.

库克的第三个妙招是理解了网络效应的重要性——数字市场的经济机制使大企业变得更大。就连对iPhone的应用程序商店持矛盾态度的乔布斯也未能做到这一点。相比之下，库克在数字“飞轮”上加倍下注:应用程序商店吸引了更多的APP序制造商，用户和开发人员，以此类推——直到它成为世界上营收最高的数字市场。根据苹果(Apple)赞助的一项研究，如今它拥有近200万款应用，在2020年为应用开发者带来了6430亿美元的营收和销售额。

mr Cook was the first big-tech boss to signal, loudly and often, that companies of Apple’s size and reach must take some responsibility for their impact on the wider world. Under Jobs, a gadget’s looks were more important than how they were made. Today Lisa Jackson, a former head of America’s Environmental Protection Agency and now a vice-president directly reporting to Mr Cook, is involved in product development from the start. Apple has set itself the laudable goal of becoming carbon neutral across all its products by 2030. And Mr Cook has called privacy “a fundamental human right” and, among other things, forced app makers to ask users whether they want to be tracked by advertisers.

库克是第一个大声且经常发出信号的大型科技公司老板，他表示，像苹果这样规模和覆盖范围的公司必须为自己对更广泛世界的影响承担一定责任。在乔布斯的领导下，设备的外观比它们是如何制造更为重要。如今，美国环境保护局(environmental Protection Agency)前局长、现任副总裁、直接向库克汇报的丽莎?杰克逊(Lisa Jackson)从一开始就参与了产品开发。苹果为自己设定了一个值得称赞的目标:到2030年，所有产品都实现碳中和。库克称隐私是“一项基本人权”，并要求应用程序开发商询问用户是否希望被广告商跟踪。

admittedly, being pro-privacy aligns with Apple’s business model, which unlike those of Facebook and Google does not make money by collecting data to sell targeted ads, and climate-cuddling plays well with the sensibilities of Apple’s mostly well-off users at little cost, given Apple’s relatively shallow carbon footprint. This has helped keep regulators off Apple’s back—and made it into the world’s most valuable brand, according to one estimate.

诚然，支持隐私与苹果的商业模式是一致的，它不像Facebook和谷歌那样通过收集数据来销售有针对性的广告来赚钱，而且考虑到苹果相对较浅的碳足迹，支持气候变化很好地迎合了苹果大多数富裕用户的情感，而且成本很低。据一项估计，这帮助苹果摆脱了监管机构的压力，并使其成为世界上最有价值的品牌。

in other words, after ten years of Cookery Apple is a bigger and better version of itself, says Horace Dediu, a long-time Apple watcher. That, though, is not to say it is invulnerable. Three challenges stand out: growth, geopolitics and competition.

长期关注苹果的霍勒斯?德迪欧(horace Dediu)表示，换句话说，经过十年的“烹饪”，苹果变得更大、更好了。不过，这并不是说它是无懈可击的。三个挑战突出:增长、地缘政治和竞争。

on the surface, growth looks healthy enough. To the surprise of those analysts who have for years predicted the iPhone’s decline, the device keeps raking in money. Global unit sales are down from a peak of 231m in 2015, but only a bit: Apple still sold 200m of them last year. But the market for smartphones will eventually mature. And even if this takes time, Apple will increasingly run up against a problem familiar to all large firms: the bigger they get, the harder it becomes to grow rapidly.

从表面上看，经济增长相当健康。令那些多年来一直预测iPhone会衰落的分析师感到意外的是，这款设备一直在赚钱。全球手机销量较2015年2.31亿部的峰值有所下降，但降幅很小:苹果去年仍售出了2亿部。但智能手机市场终将成熟。即使这需要时间，苹果也会越来越多地遇到所有大公司都熟悉的问题:公司规模越大，快速增长就越困难。

mr Cook has been able to tap into other sources of revenue, notes Neil Cybart, who runs Above Avalon, a website which analyses all things Apple. The company’s services business, including the App Store and Apple Music, has surged from $8bn in sales in 2011 to $65bn in the past four quarters. Though wearables like the Apple Watch and accessories such as the AirPods are a smaller business than the iPhone, they generate lots of revenue: nearly $9bn in three months to June. Last year AirPods ended up in more than 200m ears and Apple Watches on 34m wrists, respectively outselling all other smart speakers and all Swiss timepieces combined.

尼尔?西巴特(neil Cybart)指出，库克已经能够利用其他收入来源。他经营着一家分析苹果所有业务的网站Above Avalon。该公司的服务业务，包括应用商店和苹果音乐，在过去四个季度的销售额从2011年的80亿美元飙升至650亿美元。尽管苹果手表等可穿戴设备和AirPods等配件的业务规模比iPhone小，但它们创造了大量收入：在截至6月的三个月内，收入接近90亿美元。去年AirPods的销量超过2亿只，苹果手表的销量超过3400万只手腕，分别超过了所有其他智能耳机和所有瑞士钟表的销量总和。

at some point, however, Apple will need another keystone innovation like the iPhone. Hence talk of “iGlasses”, which would add a digital layer to the physical reality perceived by the wearer, and even an iCar. Although the firm does not confirm this, it is an open secret that it has been working on both for years. Leaks suggest that augmented-reality glasses may finally be coming in the next year or two and Apple reportedly has plans to release a vehicle that is both electric and self-driving in 2024. But it is also widely known that things have not been going well and timelines have slipped in the past.

然而，在某个时刻，苹果将需要另一个关键的创新，比如iPhone。因此，人们开始谈论“iGlasses”，它将为佩戴者甚至iCar感知到的物理现实添加一个数字层。尽管该公司没有证实这一点，但多年来一直致力于这两方面的工作，这是一个公开的秘密。据透露，增强现实眼镜可能在未来一两年内最终面世，据报道，苹果公司计划在2024年推出一款电动和自动驾驶的汽车。但众所周知，事情进展并不顺利，过去的时间表也有所下滑。

the car, which unlike the glasses is not a natural extension of Apple’s current consumer-tech line-up, would be difficult to pull off. Even without a petrol engine and a gearbox, a vehicle is much harder to manufacture than a smartphone. Apple’s automotive thinking appears to have gone back and forth between building its own self-driving cars from scratch or providing the necessary electronics and software to other carmakers.

与眼镜不同的是，这款汽车并不是苹果当前消费科技产品线的自然延伸，因此很难实现。即使没有汽油发动机和变速箱，汽车也比智能手机更难制造。苹果在汽车领域的思路似乎是在从零开始制造自己的自动驾驶汽车，与向其他汽车制造商提供必要的电子设备和软件之间来回切换。

mr Cook’s second big challenge is geopolitics. Apple has so far escaped the mounting tensions between the West and China, where most of the firm’s products are assembled and many of them are sold. Mr Cook has made all sorts of concessions to the authorities in Beijing, from moving its Chinese users’ information to data centres in the country, where they can be accessed by local law enforcement, to taking down some apps in the Chinese version of its App Store. “We follow the law wherever we do business,” is Mr Cook’s motto.

库克面临的第二大挑战是地缘政治。到目前为止，苹果公司逃脱了西方和中国之间日益紧张的关系。苹果公司的大部分产品都是在中国组装和销售的。库克向北京当局做出了各种让步，从将中国用户的信息转移到中国的数据中心(在那里，当地执法部门可以获取用户信息)，到下架中国版苹果应用商店(app Store)中的一些应用。“无论在哪里做生意，我们都要遵守法律，”这是库克的座右铭。

now, though, the pugnacity with which the Chinese government has gone after its own tech giants must be making some in Apple’s futuristic headquarters in Cupertino, Silicon Valley, nervous. Though it has been beefing up manufacturing in other countries, particularly in India and Vietnam, Apple does not have an alternative to China for the bulk of its assembly. It is hard to see where else it might find one. Only China has a ready army of workers needed to quickly ramp up production of the latest iPhone.

但现在，中国政府对本国科技巨头的强硬态度，一定让位于硅谷库比蒂诺的苹果总部的一些人感到紧张。尽管苹果一直在加强在其他国家的生产，特别是在印度和越南，但在大部分组装方面，苹果没有其他选择。很难看到其他地方能找到这样的公司。只有中国拥有一支随时待命的工人大军，可以迅速提高最新款iPhone的产量。

judging by Apple’s latest supplier list, the firm has even increased its reliance on Chinese companies. Of the top 200 suppliers, 51 were based in China, up from 42 in 2018. At the height of the trade war then-president Donald Trump waged with China in 2019, Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, estimated that in the worst-case scenario Chinese retaliation could reduce Apple’s profits by nearly 30%.

从苹果最新的供应商名单来看，该公司甚至增加了对中国公司的依赖。在前200家供应商中，有51家位于中国，高于2018年的42家。在2019年时任美国总统唐纳德·特朗普(donald Trump)与中国发起的贸易战最激烈的时候，投资银行高盛(Goldman Sachs)估计，在最坏的情况下，中国的报复可能会使苹果的利润减少近30%。

the fallout could be worse if Apple’s products and services were banned in China. As the it turns increasingly authoritarian and the West increasingly suspicious of China, Apple may become a target of Beijing’s wrath or the sort of nationalist-tinged boycotts that have hurt Western brands from the NBA to Zara.

如果苹果的产品和服务在中国被禁，后果可能会更糟。随着其变得越来越严厉，西方对中国的怀疑也越来越多，苹果可能会成为其愤怒的目标，或者像NBA、Zara等西方品牌一样，受到带有民族主义色彩的抵制。

and if Apple’s importance to China’s economy continues to offer a protective shield, this may anger governments and consumers in the West. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss, has called out Apple for hypocrisy for touting privacy protection at home while allowing the government to access personal data . “At some point something will happen that becomes a loyalty test,” thinks Willy Shih of Harvard Business School.

如果苹果对中国经济的重要性继续起到保护作用，这可能会激怒西方政府和消费者。facebook的老板马克·扎克伯格（mark Zuckerberg）指责苹果在国内兜售隐私保护，同时允许政府访问个人数据。”哈佛商学院的Willy Shih认为，“在某个时候，会发生一些事情，就像是一种忠诚测试。”。

apple says it has found no evidence of any forced labour in its supply chain. Mr Zuckerberg himself could also be accused of being hypocritical, since Facebook is making billions from Chinese advertisers on its social networks. But even if those controversies are resolved in Apple’s favour, they are feeding into pushback against its behaviour at home: witness the recent brouhaha over its plans to scan private pictures on iPhones for child pornography.

苹果表示，在其供应链中没有发现任何强迫劳动的证据。扎克伯格本人也可能被指责为虚伪，因为Facebook从其社交网络上的中国广告商那里赚取了数十亿美元。但即使这些争议得到了有利于苹果的解决，它们也会对苹果在国内的行为造成不利影响:看看苹果最近计划扫描iphone上的私人照片以寻找儿童色情内容而引发的骚动吧。

mr Zuckerberg’s China-related broadside also hints at Mr Cook’s third challenge: competition. Network effects are not the only thing benefiting firms like Apple. Another is the lack of real rivals. Some view Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft as a cartel whose members have tacitly agreed not to encroach on each other’s core businesses. Apple has never tried to be a social-media powerhouse and Facebook has not attempted to create an alternative app store. Instead of building its own search engine, Apple cut a deal with Google, making it the default search engine on the iPhone (and charging an estimated $8bn-12bn annually for the privilege, equivalent to 14-21% of Apple’s net profit in 2020).

扎克伯格对中国的抨击也暗示了库克面临的第三个挑战:竞争。网络效应并不是苹果这样的公司唯一受益的东西。另一个原因是缺乏真正的竞争对手。一些人将Alphabet(谷歌的母公司)、亚马逊(Amazon)、苹果(Apple)、脸书(Facebook)和微软(Microsoft)视为一个卡特尔，其成员都互相默认互不侵犯对方的核心业务。苹果从未试他不仅在外表（高、瘦、头发灰白）上，而且在思维和经验上都是一个双性恋者。自2010年以来，他一直担任库克先

生的旧职，负责监督苹果的供应链和运营。这些技能在过去十年中为公司带来了显著的好处。为了保持繁荣，苹果的下一任首席执行官可能需要一套不同的能力。