查看完整版本: 朗讯是如何“失足”的 (转载)

朗讯是如何“失足”的 (转载)

朗讯是如何“失足”的
---科研与市场相脱离
How Lucent Stumbled: Research Surpasses Marketing


By SETH SCHIESEL

         朗讯技术公司1996年9月30日从其母公司AT&T中独立出来，离
开它的暖巢，成为一家通信设备制造商，从此开始了新的历程。当天，朗
讯的股票以略低于11美元收盘。
It was on Sept. 30, 1996 that Lucent Technologies left the
nest and began its new life as a maker of communications
equipment independent from its parent, AT&T. That day,
Lucent's shares closed at a split-adjusted value a bit
below $11.

        上周二，仅仅过去了四年多一点时间，朗讯便在今年第三次宣
布，它不能实现其财务目标，搅得整个华尔街惶惶不安。第二天，朗讯的
股票跌幅约为其价值的三分之一，下挫10美元，以21.38美元收盘。周五
股市收盘时，朗讯股票从去年的近80美元跌至23.25美元。
Last Tuesday, a little more than four years later, the
company unnerved Wall Street, announcing for the third time
this year that it would not meet its financial targets. The
next day, Lucent's shares lost about a third of their
value, falling $10 to $21.38. The stock closed on Friday at
$23.25, down from almost $80 late last year.

         在现今时代，一家主要技术公司的股票价值仅为四年前的两
倍，这几乎就等于投资失败。这到底是怎么回事？这一家公司仅仅在一年
前还被公认为是成功的典范，现在怎么表现地如此差劲？
In this era, for the stock of a major technology company to
merely double its price of four years ago amounts to an
investing bust. What happened? How did this company, which
as recently as a year ago was widely considered a model of
success, sputter so badly?

          投资者和分析家可能会担心大规模减缓通信设备开支将会威
胁到整个通信设备工业的健康发展，但是朗讯的问题看来主要还是咎由自
取。
There may be concern among investors and analysts that a
broad slowdown in spending on communications gear threatens
the health of the entire communications equipment industry.


But Lucent's problems seem largely of its own making.


         在Richard A. McGinn（以前是公司总裁，现为董事长和首席
执行官）的带领下，朗讯的高级管理人员看来是被他们早期所取得的成功
冲昏了头脑。无论起因是什么，有一点现在已经很清楚，该公司陷入困境
是由于向华尔街的承诺好高务远，然而其自吹自擂的、庞大的贝尔实验室
的科研活动在创造效益方面又步履蹒跚。
Led by Richard A. McGinn, originally the president and now
the chairman and chief executive, Lucent's senior managers
seem to have become blinded by their early success.
Whatever the cause, it is now clear that the company got
into trouble by promising too much to Wall Street, while
being too slow to force money-making results from its vast
and vaunted Bell Laboratories research operation.


          在早期，朗讯刚刚从AT&T派生出来，可以将设备卖给电信公
司（这些公司以前把AT&T视为他们的竞争对手），其销售量急剧增长，尤


其是光网络设备。 朗讯在1996年和1997年的销路是如此之旺，以至于它
在第二年决定不再将重点放在新一代光网络设备（业界称为OC-192产品）
的开发上面。
In the early going, freed by the AT&T spinoff to sell
equipment to telecommunications companies that had viewed
AT&T as a competitor, Lucent enjoyed fast sales growth,
particularly with its optical networking gear. So brisk
were sales in 1996 and 1997, in fact, that the following
year Lucent decided to de-emphasize the development of a
new generation of optical networking equipment known in the
industry as OC-192 gear.

          事后才我们才明白这是一个多么关键的错误判断。

Only in hindsight is it clear what a crucial misjudgment
that was.

         OC-192产品使用一个光波长在一秒钟内便可传输10G比特数字
信息。朗讯的主要竞争对手，加拿大的北电网络将此类设备作为其最重要
的产品来发展。

OC-192 equipment can transmit 10 billion bits of digital
information a second using a single wavelength of light.
And Lucent's main rival, Nortel Networks of Canada, made
that sort of gear a top priority.

         现在，正是凭借其光业务（光业务是通信设备业最兴旺的业务
之一，因为通信公司和运营商要求通信设备既能传送声音和数据，又能传
送图像以及其他高速传输），北电得到了突飞猛进的发展。同时，朗讯长
期地依赖其老产品，同时决定投资发展一种新型的光网络产品，但这种产
品远没有OC-192那么成功。

Now, Nortel is riding high on the strength of its optical
business, one of the most robust segments of the
communications equipment industry, as corporations and
carriers demand gear capable of carrying not only voice and
data, but also video and other high-speed traffic. In the
meantime, Lucent relied too long on its lineup of older
equipment, while deciding to invest in a new type of
optical networking gear that has not been as successful as
OC-192 technology.

        撍?姓庖磺卸伎梢怨榻嵛?罡?镜囊坏悖?盬illiam T.


O'Shea （朗讯负责公司战略规划和业务发展的执行副总裁）周五在接受
记者的采访时说，“那就是，我们围绕OC-192和10G光网络系统作出了错
误的决策，种下了苦果，而坦率地说，我们直到现在还在继续品尝着这一
苦果。在那个时间点，这种产品就这样开始了。当时，我们与北电在光网
络产品方面实际上并驾齐驱，不相上下。然而现在北电在这方面的业务量
却是我们的好几倍。如果我们当时作出不同的决策，并且今年以及本季度
的光网业务量能够达到北电的规模的话，那么我们甚至根本就不会去留意
我们刚才所谈论的那些事情。”
“It all boils down to kind of one fundamental thing,''
William T. O'Shea, Lucent's executive vice president for
corporate strategy and business development, said Friday in
an interview. ''And that is, we made a decision around OC-
192 and 10-gigabit optical systems that, frankly, we're
still living with. At that point in time, that stuff was
just getting started, and we and Nortel were just about
neck-and-neck in optical. Nortel now is several times our
size. If we had made a different decision and had shown an
optical business this year and this quarter the size of
Nortel's, we wouldn't even notice the other things we've
talked about.''

          朗讯不愿请McGinn先生出面对此发表意见。
Lucent declined to make Mr. McGinn available for comment.



          朗讯星期二还谈到，由于它向其客户提供贷款，导致坏帐越
积越多。但是即使这个问题也反映出McGinn先生领导下的朗讯的公司文化
和管理哲学。

Another thing Lucent talked about on Tuesday was an
increased exposure to bad debt, the result of lending to
its own customers. But even that problem seems to reflect
the corporate culture and engineering philosophy under Mr.
McGinn.

         在过去的几十年里，对AT&T（现在是对朗讯）的一个最严厉批
评就是它在新技术的发明方面非常成功，但是有时在将那些技术转化为能
够创造收益、在市场上领先的产品方面却步伐缓慢。过去的一些例子包括
晶体管、激光以及蜂窝无线技术。
For decades, one of the biggest criticisms of AT&T, and
more recently Lucent, has been that the company did a great
job of inventing new technologies but was sometimes slow to
turn those technologies into revenue-producing, market-
leading products. The older examples include the transistor, the laser and cellular wireless technology.


         在90年代早期，贝尔实验室在光通信环网互联技术方面处于领
先地位。如今，这一市场却被法国的Tellabs公司和阿尔卡特所主宰。

And in the early 1990's, Bell Labs was a leader in
technology for connecting optical communications rings to
one another. Now, that market is dominated by Tellabs Inc.
and Alcatel of France.


          与此相仿，朗讯为一种叫做异步传输模式（或者简称为
A.T.M，它是很多现代网络的基础）的通信技术开发出了最佳的芯片，但
是另外一家公司，Ascend通信公司使用朗讯的芯片做成了被广泛认为是最
好的A.T.M交换机。最后，朗讯为了维持其在该市场的竞争力，不得不花

费200亿美元的股票来收购Ascend。
Similarly, Lucent developed the best chips for a kind of
communications technology called asynchronous transfer
mode, or A.T.M., which is the foundation of many modern
networks. But another company, Ascend Communications, used
Lucent's chips to make what were widely viewed as the best
A.T.M. switches. In the end, Lucent had to spend $20 billion of its shareholders' equity to acquire Ascend in
order to stay competitive in that market.


          “通常来说，贝尔实验室在科技发明方面卓尔不群，”Lehman兄弟公司的分析家 Steven D. Levy在星期五这样评论说，“但你
却很少发现贝尔实验室的母公司（不管是过去的AT&T还是现如今的朗讯）
因为它们最先进入市场而在哪些领域能够成为该商业市场的领头羊。现在
市场的最大的一个变化就是产品的生命周期越来越短，因此紧迫感越来越
强烈。在这种环境之下，你根本不可能保证每件事都是120%地正确无
误。”。
''Generically, Bell Labs is wonderful at inventing
things,'' Steven D. Levy, an analyst with Lehman Brothers,


said on Friday. ''Yet there are very few things that you
can point to where the Bell Labs parent, whether it was
AT&T in the old days or Lucent today, has ever been the
commercial market leader because they were the first to
market. One of the biggest changes is that product cycles
are getting shorter, so there is much more of a sense of
urgency. In that environment, you cannot afford to make
sure that everything is 120 percent correct.''

          你只要去过硅谷便会不断地听到人们愤愤不平地说，思科系
统公司很少去搞科研发明，但却能挣这么多钱。思科之所以如此兴旺发
达，是由于它先并购拥有有价值的技术的公司，然后再将这种技术转化为
客户可以购买的产品。
Spend any time in Silicon Valley and you may hear people
complaining that Cisco Systems does so little research and
yet makes so much money. Cisco has thrived by acquiring
companies with valuable technology and then turning that
technology into products customers can buy.

        但是朗讯在技术方面问题还不仅仅是在把贝尔实验室的科研成果
投放到市场上方面过于迟缓。在光网络上面，该公司所作出的赌注的后果
一时半会也不会消除。

But Lucent's technology problem is not only a matter of
being too slow to bring the fruits of Bell Labs to market.
In the case of optical networking, the company also made a
bet that has yet to pay off.

          朗讯没有将重点放在新一代OC-192产品上面，而是全力以赴
开发另外一种产品，通过使用叫做波分复用的技术，这种产品在一根光纤
维上可以传输多颜色光。使用这种技术的设备已经成为通信行业的重要组
成部分，但是它并没有能弥补朗讯在OC-192业务上的劣势。
Rather than stress the new OC-192 generation of products,
Lucent concentrated on other sorts of gear that can
transmit multiple colors of light over a single optical
fiber using a technique called wave-division multiplexing.
Equipment for this technology has become an important part

of the communications industry, but it has not made up for
Lucent's weakness in OC-192 business.

          现在，朗讯的研究人员正在开发下一代技术，使用这一技术
的设备在一秒钟内将能够传输40G比特的信息。问题在于，被称为OC-768
的这种技术是否能够及时地从实验室转入到市场中去。

Now, Lucent's researchers are working on technology for the
next generation, equipment that will be able to transmit 40
billion bits of information a second. The question is
whether that technology, known as OC-768, will make a
timely leap from the lab to the market.

         当然，很多公司对将来的技术发展方向的推测都是不正确的，
但朗讯的错误由于其对华尔街过高的预期而被扩大。朗讯初期的收入增长
高达15%，给分析家们留下了深刻的印象，这时，McGinn先生便在1998年
宣称该公司将向持续保持年均20%的增长率的目标挺进。
Many companies guess wrong about the future direction of
technology, of course. But Lucent's mistakes were magnified
by the heightened expectations the company raised on Wall
Street. After impressing analysts with revenue growth of 15
percent in the early going, Mr. McGinn said in 1998 that
the company would move toward sustained annual growth of 20
percent.

         但是朗讯并没有能够实现自己的目标。上个星期二，该公司宣
布在上个月结束的第三季度中，它的营业收入将比去年同期增长14%到
15%。朗讯此前曾让分析家们以为本季度每股收益大约会增加15%，但到了
星期二，该公司却透露坏消息：收益将会下降。
But Lucent has not been able to pull that off. Last
Tuesday, the company said it would show year-over-year
revenue growth of 14 to 15 percent for the quarter that
ended last month. It had previously led analysts to believe
that per-share earnings would increase by roughly 15
percent in the quarter. But on Tuesday, the company broke
the bad news that those earnings would decline.



          朗讯公司的错误越积越大，比如一些分析家指出，由于它自

己给自己施加压力，企图去实现过高的收入目标，结果导致该公司向其客
户提供比过去更加优惠的信贷条件。而这一做法便造成了朗讯在上周所披
露的坏帐问题。
As an indication of the compounding nature of corporate
mistakes, some analysts have said that it was Lucent's self-
imposed pressure to achieve overly ambitious revenue goals
that led the company to offer ever more generous terms and
credit to its customers. That practice contributed to the
bad-debt problem that Lucent disclosed last week.


          朗讯在兴冲冲的起步之后，仅仅过了短短的四年时间，它所
面临的困境便压得它喘不过气来。现在的问题是该公司董事会将给McGinn
先生多长时间来解决这些棘手的问题。

How quickly the troubles have piled up for Lucent, a mere
four years after the company's heady start. The question
now is how long the company's board will give Mr. McGinn to
fix the problems.

天，这可是2000年的文章，Rich McGinn 01年就下台了吧，希望大家阅读时注意了。

日前电信巨头阿尔卡特－朗讯公司宣布2008年公司收入预计将下滑2％到5％，主要是美元疲软以及运营商削减开支造成。这一消息促使公司当天股价最高下滑7.8％。

　　阿尔卡特-朗讯维持对其2008年运营利润的预期，第二季度的收入预计增长4%到6%，而一般该季度阿尔卡特-朗讯的收入增长率在5%至10%之间。对于2008年电信设备和服务市场，该公司持相当谨慎态度。

　　今年一季度，阿朗赢利3600万欧元，而去年同期则亏损2.44亿欧元，该季度实现赢利得益于3100万欧元的专利出售，排除这部分收入，阿朗的运营赢利也稍微好于预期，从一年前的34.4%增长到了36.2%。第一季度，阿朗收入从一年前的38.8亿欧元下滑到了38.6亿欧元，这主要是美元疲软造成的。

朗讯在中国的业务也不算太牛气呀，地盘越来越小了它。