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In a factory compound called “Silicon
Valley Power” in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, one of the
white-tiled buildings is locked. Until last year, it was home to a
mobile phone assembly line. “They closed down and sent the workers
home,” says a guard.
| 在中國深圳市硅谷動力(Silicon Valley Power)產業園里，一棟外表貼著白瓷磚的樓房大門緊鎖著。直到去年，這棟樓里還運行著一條手機生產線。“他們關門了，然後把工人們都遣散了，”一位保安說。
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In Shenzhen, the epicentre of the global handset industry, such closures are quite common these days.
| 在全球手機業中心深圳，此類工廠關門事件近來非常普遍。
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Chinese consumers’ love affair with
smartphones, with their internet access and superior functionality, is
wreaking havoc with white-label makers, the thousands of small companies
that have been providing less affluent consumers with low-end phones.
| 中國消費者迷上了能夠上網、功能超強的智能手機，給“白標”製造商帶來了嚴重的影響。白標製造商指的是數以千計的小公司，它們一直在向不太富裕的消費者供應低端手機。
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Some churn out cheap copies of the
latest branded phones but others create new products tailor-made for the
needs and tastes of Chinese migrant workers, small town merchants and
peasants, such as phones studded with fake crystals and handsets with
extra strong speakers and long battery life that allow workers to listen
to the radio on a noisy construction site. Their products come
unbranded or under little known brands and at a fraction of the price of
a Nokia phone.
| 有些公司根據最新版的品牌手機推出低價的仿製版本，但也有公司根據中國農民工、小鎮商人和農民
的需求與喜好生產新型手機，比如有些手機鑲上了人造水晶，還有些手機裝上了聲音超大的擴音器和待機時間長的電池——這樣他們就可以在吵鬧的建築工地收聽廣
播節目。白標製造商的產品不是沒有品牌，就是使用一些基本沒人聽說過的品牌，而售價只是一部諾基亞(Nokia)手機的幾分之一。
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Companies producing these mobile phones
accounted for about half of the Chinese handset market in 2010, but now
they are struggling. Gartner, the research firm, estimates that
white-label handset sales dropped 7 per cent in 2011 to 186m units, or
42 per cent of all mobile phones sold in China, and will plummet another
30 per cent this year.
| 在2010年，此類手機的生產商大概占據了中國市場的半壁江山，但它們目前都在困境中掙扎。研究公司Gartner估計，2011年白標手機銷售量下降了7%，降至1.86億部（占全國手機銷量的42%），今年還將再降30%。
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One reason is the rollout of 3G mobile
services in China, which means consumers want to use their phones to
access the internet. Operators are also subsidising smartphones and
marketing them in small town China, where white-label handsets used to
rule.
| 其中一個原因是中國推出了3G服務，這意味著消費者希望使用手機上網。運營商還對智能手機進行補貼，並把它們推向白標手機曾占統治地位的中國小城鎮市場。
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“Consumers are becoming more
sophisticated – they are learning to demand quality, and they are
becoming brand conscious,” says Sandy Shen, head of consumer research at
Gartner in Shanghai.
| “消費者變得愈發精明——他們正學著追求質量，品牌意識也越來越濃，”Gartner駐上海消費者研究主管沈哲怡表示。
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Hundreds of white-label handset manufacturers have closed down as a result. But for some, the shakeout is an opportunity.
| 其結果是，數百家白標手機製造商已經關門。但對其中的一些公司而言，行業洗牌也是一種機遇。
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Next to the shuttered factory at Silicon
Valley Power, SOP Group, a midsize Chinese handset maker, is expanding.
“We are investing big in quality control,” says Mei Saichun, the
company’s general manager, pointing to machines that bake, steam, smash
and scratch his phones to test resilience. SOP manufactures about
300,000 handsets a month, and about half of them are now smartphones.
| 在離硅谷動力產業園這家關門的公司不遠的地方，一家中等規模的中國手機製造商賽博宇華(SOP
Group)卻正在進行擴張。“我們正投入大筆資金用於加強質量控制”，該公司總經理梅賽春表示。說這番話的時候，他指著那些對手機進行烘、蒸、打、劃等
操作以測試其承受能力的機器。賽博宇華每月手機產量大約為30萬部，目前約一半是智能手機。
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Companies such as K-Touch, Gionee,
Coolpad, Meizu, Oppo and Bubugao are also quietly building their brands,
forming a new breed still unnoticed in developed markets where Huawei,
the telecom equipment maker, is making a splash by pushing into the
consumer market.
| 天語(K-Touch)、金立(Gionee)、酷派(Coolpad)、魅族
(Meizu)、Oppo和步步高(Bubugao)等公司也在悄悄地建立自己的品牌，形成一股發達市場尚未註意到的力量。在發達市場，電信設備製造商華
為(Huawei)已進入消費者市場，並引起了轟動。
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Life for the second-tier handset makers
is not easy. The price gap between them and the global brands in
smartphones is much smaller than it was between a global brand phone and
a low-end feature phone in the past due to operator subsidies.
| 二線手機製造商的日子並不好過。由於運營商的補貼，它們的產品與全球品牌智能手機之間的價差，遠遠小於過去低端多功能手機與國際品牌手機之間的價差。
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The phone companies also find it harder
to differentiate themselves. “Smartphones look much more similar to one
another – a big touch screen, a small size range, few keys, few
colours,” says Su Feng, vice-president at Coolpad.
| 這些手機製造商還發現，要使自己的手機脫穎而出變得更加困難了。酷派副總裁蘇峰表示：“和以往相比，如今智能手機的外觀更加相像——都有很大的觸摸屏，尺寸變化不大，按鍵和顏色都非常少。”
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The companies respond with different
strategies. Some target niche markets. Oppo and Bubugao, two companies
in the industrial town of Dongguan, not far from Shenzhen, have
successfully positioned themselves as phone brands for women. Coolpad,
meanwhile, co-operates closely with mobile operators.
| 這些公司採取了不同的應對策略。有些公司主打細分市場。Oppo和步步高已經成功地將自己定位於女性手機品牌。這兩家公司位於距離深圳不遠的工業城市東莞市。同時，酷派則在與移動運營商進行密切合作。
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Meizu, a homegrown answer to Apple in
Zhuhai, across the Pearl River from Shenzhen, runs its own app store.
“What makes us different in the eyes of our customers are applications,
not hardware features,” says Hua Hailiang, the company’s sales head.
Meizu’s app store hit 100m downloads last week – just a fraction of
Apple’s 25bn worldwide, but a source of pride for the Chinese company.
| 在與深圳隔珠江相望的珠海市，本土手機品牌魅族也像蘋果(Apple)一樣，開設了自己的應用
商店。該公司營銷總監華海良表示：“使我們在顧客眼中與眾不同的是應用，而不是硬件功能。”上周，魅族應用商店下載量達到了1億次——與蘋果250億次的
全球下載量相比很小——卻已成為這家中國手機廠商的一個值得驕傲之處。
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Another area for growth are overseas
markets less developed than China. SOP now exports about one-third of
its handsets through offices in Indonesia, India and Ghana.
| 另一個增長領域是發達程度尚不如中國的海外市場。目前，賽博宇華通過其設在印尼、印度和加納的辦事處，將手機產量的大約三分之一齣口到海外市場。
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“The fact that some markets in South
Asia and Africa still lack 3G, many consumers there cannot read and they
just can’t afford smartphones means their demand will remain focused on
feature phones for another two or three years,” says Adam Chen, head of
the group’s export unit. Despite the challenges, the fast-growing
smartphone market should offer room for Chinese second-tier brands. IDC
forecast last week that China will overtake the US as the world’s
largest smartphone market this year, and that India and Brazil will rise
into the top five by 2016.
| “南亞和非洲的一些市場仍未推出3G服務，那裡的許多消費者不識字，也買不起智能手機。這意味
著，未來兩至三年內，他們的需求仍將集中在多功能手機上，”賽博宇華集團出口部主管陳燦坤表示。盡管存在諸多挑戰，但快速增長的智能手機市場應該會為中國
二線品牌提供一定的發展空間。研究公司IDC上周預測，中國今年將超過美國成為全球最大的智能手機市場，而到2016年印度和巴西將進入前五行列。
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The research firm added: “To realise the
full potential of emerging markets, smartphone vendors need to develop
low-cost smartphones that provide a full, robust experience.”
| IDC補充表示：“為了充分挖掘新興市場的潛能，智能手機廠商需要開發出能夠提供全面、強勁用戶體驗的低價智能手機。”
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| 譯者/邢嵬 |
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