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With the near-term outlook on its core ranges of iPhones and iPads hazy, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, was unusually open on a call with analysts about longer-range opportunities.
在苹果(Apple)近期前景模糊不清的情况下，苹果首席执行官蒂姆•库克(Tim Cook)在与分析师的电话会议中谈及苹果的更长期机会时异常坦诚。
Top of his mind were Apple’s early forays into cars through CarPlay and the living room with Apple TV, as well as artificial intelligence and Pokémon Go-style “augmented reality”.
在他心中占据首要地位的是苹果通过CarPlay初步涉足汽车业务，用Apple TV占领人们的客厅，还有人工智能和《口袋妖怪Go》(Pokémon Go)式的“增强现实”。
So far this year investors have focused narrowly on the iPhone’s growth — or lack of it. After iPhone sales fell 16 per cent in the quarter to March, Apple’s third-quarter results showed only a moderate improvement, with sales down 15 per cent albeit at the higher end of analysts’ expectations.
今年迄今，投资者的关注都仅仅集中于iPhone的增长——准确地说是集中于该产品未能实现增长的事实。今年第一季度，iPhone销量同比下滑16%。第二季度的业绩显示iPhone的销售情况略有好转，销量同比下滑15%，但处于分析师预测区间的较高一端。
Yet in spite of the continuing decline in Apple’s most important product, investors cheered Tuesday’s results, sending its stock up 7 per cent to above the symbolic $100 level as Wall Street took a longer-term view of the iPhone-maker’s prospects. Shares reached $103.25 in after-hours trading.
尽管苹果最重要的产品iPhone的销量持续下滑，苹果上周二公布的业绩让投资者欢欣鼓舞。随着华尔街以一种更长远的眼光来看这家iPhone制造商的前景，苹果的股价上涨7%，突破具有象征意义的每股100美元大关，在盘后交易中达到了每股103.25美元。
The company’s outlook for the fourth quarter indicated that the decline in iPhone sales would continue, with analysts at Piper Jaffray estimating that Apple’s total revenue guidance of $45.5bn-$47.5bn implies a year-on-year drop in iPhone units of 6 to 10 per cent.
苹果对第三季度的展望表明，iPhone的销量还将继续下滑。据Piper Jaffray的分析师估计，苹果455亿美元到475亿美元的收入展望表明iPhone销量将同比下滑6%到10%。
With expectations lower than usual for the technological advances likely to feature in the next iPhone due out in September, many analysts are forecasting little to no growth for the next few quarters, too.
下一代iPhone定于9月发布，对这款iPhone可能主打的技术进步，外界的预期异常低下，许多分析师预测iPhone在接下来几个季度的销量不会增长，或者增长很少。
It was perhaps unsurprising that Mr Cook wanted to talk about its other product ideas for a change.
因此，库克想要换换样，谈论苹果的其他产品想法，可能就并不令人惊讶了。
“Normally they focus on the short term and don’t get into any kind of speculation. This time it was different,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies, a Silicon Valley consultancy. “Generally it seemed like they were saying, ‘Let’s talk about the future and not dwell too much on what is going on at the moment’.”
“他们通常着眼于短期，不会进行任何形式的猜想。这次情况不同，”硅谷咨询公司Creative Strategies的分析师卡罗琳娜•米拉内西(Carolina Milanesi)说，“大体上他们就像是在说，‘让我们谈谈未来，不要老想着眼下发生的事情’。”
A jump in Apple’s spending on research and development showed that Mr Cook’s bout of futurology was not all talk, however. Even as its revenues declined, Apple increased its R&D investment by 26 per cent to $2.6bn in the quarter. Over the first nine months of the fiscal year, R&D is up 28 per cent. “There is quite a bit that we are doing beyond our current products,” he said.
苹果研发支出的大幅上升表明，库克对未来的展望并非全都只是说说而已。虽然收入降低了，苹果第二季度研发支出同比增加了26%，至26亿美元。截至今年6月底的9个月，苹果的研发支出同比增加了28%。“我们在目前的产品之外所做的事情有不少，”他说。
The most ambitious of Apple’s secret development projects is its plan to build an electric car. While Mr Cook did not comment on Apple’s automotive ambitions, he did hint at new product categories beyond its current portfolio.
在苹果的秘密开发项目中，最具雄心的是制造电动汽车的计划。尽管库克并未对苹果的汽车产品雄心置评，他的确暗示了目前的产品系列以外的新产品种类。
Walt Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG Research, noted that Apple’s R&D spending as a percentage of revenues hit a record 6 per cent in the quarter, compared with 3.5 per cent for 2015 and 2.6 per cent in 2013. “When your [annual] R&D budget doubles to $10bn in three years, presumably you have some big projects in the hopper,” he said.
BTIG Research的分析师沃尔特•佩西克(Walter Piecyk)指出，苹果的研发支出与收入的比例在今年第二季度达到了创纪录的6%，相比之下该比例在2015年为3.5%，在2013年为2.6%。“当你的（年度）研发预算在3年内增长了一倍，达到100亿美元，很可能你正在酝酿一些大型项目，”他说。
Throughout the hour-long conference call, Mr Cook made several references to Apple’s development efforts in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are improving products from its Siri virtual assistant to its Photos app.
在长达1小时的电话会议期间，库克数次提及苹果在人工智能(AI)和机器学习领域的开发努力，这些努力正在改善从Siri虚拟助手到iPhone上“照片”(Photos)应用的各种产品。
“We have focused our AI efforts on the features that best enhance the customer experience,” he said.
“我们把在AI方面的努力集中在能够最大程度改善用户体验的功能上，”他说。
Mr Cook also pointed to greater ambitions in television. Last September, Apple launched a new set-top box promising to “revolutionise” the TV world through a combination of its App Store and a fancy new remote control.
库克也提到了在电视方面的更大野心。去年9月，苹果推出了一款新的电视机顶盒，承诺要通过将其应用商店与时尚的新款遥控器相结合，为电视世界带来一场“革命”。
Despite the lofty rhetoric, it is unclear how well the new Apple TV box is selling. It is buried alongside the Apple Watch and iPod in the “other products” line, where revenues fell 16 per cent in the quarter.
尽管措辞十分高调，目前尚不清楚这款新的Apple TV盒销售情况如何。它与苹果手表(Apple Watch)和iPod一道归入了“其他产品”，该类别第二季度营收同比下滑了16%。
In an interview, Luca Maestri, Apple’s finance chief, declined to say whether sales even grew the quarter.
在一次采访中，苹果首席财务官卢卡•马埃斯特里(Luca Maestri)拒绝透露Apple TV该季度销量是否增加。
Yet Mr Cook said there was more to come from Apple in the living room. “You shouldn’t look at what’s there today and think we’ve done what we want to do,” he said, identifying the current TV box as merely a “foundation” for bigger things.
不过，库克表示，苹果还会推出更多出现在客厅中的产品。他说：“你不应该看着今天存在的东西，就认为我们已实现了想要做到的一切。”他指出，目前的电视盒只是实现更大目标的“基础”。
One area of focus is bringing more original and exclusive content to Apple platforms. Earlier on Tuesday, Apple announced a deal with CBS Television Studios securing first-run rights to a new series of the popular Carpool Karaoke show, a spin-off of US chat show The Late Late Show with James Corden, which typically racks up tens of millions of views per episode on YouTube.
一个受到关注的领域是，为苹果的平台带来更多原创性独家内容。上周二早些时候，苹果宣布了与哥伦比亚广播公司电视制作公司(CBS Television Studios)的一项协议，敲定了高人气综艺《拼车K歌》(Carpool Karaoke)新系列的首播权。《拼车K歌》是美国谈话节目《詹姆斯•科登深夜秀》(The Late Late Show with James Corden)的衍生节目，每一集在YouTube网站上的观看量通常都会达到数千万次。
Most intriguing of the long-range bets mentioned by Mr Cook, however, was augmented reality — a technology that layers digital images on top of the real world. This effect can be achieved using a headset such as Microsoft’s Hololens or the “mixed reality” goggles promised by secretive Florida-based start-up Magic Leap, or simply by using a smartphone’s camera, as with the wildly popular Pokémon Go mobile game. The Pokémon Go phenomenon shows that “AR can be huge”, Mr Cook said. “We have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run.”
不过，库克提到的长期赌注中，最有趣的部分是增强现实，这是一种将数字化图像叠加于真实世界之上的技术。实现这种效果的方法有，使用头戴式装置（类似的装置有微软(Microsoft)的Hololens，还有佛罗里达州神秘的创业型企业Magic Leap承诺将推出的“混合现实”眼镜），或是像火爆的手游《口袋妖怪Go》那样仅利用智能手机的摄像头。库克表示，《口袋妖怪Go》现象表明“增强现实(AR)可能前景广阔”。“我们一直在这方面投入重金，也会继续这么做。从长远来说，我们非常看好AR。”他说。
While no AR product has yet emerged from Apple’s labs, as the Financial Times reported earlier in the year, Apple has been hiring and acquiring significant expertise in virtual and augmented reality.
虽然正如英国《金融时报》在今年早些时候所报道的，苹果的实验室还没有拿出一款增强现实产品，但是在虚拟现实和增强现实方面，苹果一直在招兵买马。
Those efforts could manifest themselves in a future iPhone or Hololens-style headset, while some sort of heads-up display in an Apple car also seems likely.
这些努力的成果或许会体现在未来的iPhone上，或是体现为一款类似Hololens的头戴式装置，还有可能体现为苹果汽车中的某种平视显示(heads-up display)功能。
Mr Cook said AR could produce both great products and a “great commercial opportunity”, as long as other developers’ apps can tap into what Apple develops. Analysts at brokerage Needham & Co estimate Apple could make more than $3bn in revenues over the next two years from Pokémon Go alone.
库克表示，只要其他开发人员开发的应用能够对苹果开发的成果加以利用，增强现实不仅可能催生伟大的产品，还可能创造“巨大的商业机遇”。经纪商Needham & Co的分析师估计，今后两年仅仅从《口袋妖怪Go》一项产品中，苹果就可能获得逾30亿美元的营收——苹果对应用内购买项目收入收取30%的分成。
While the future-gazing seemed to excite investors, Ms Milanesi warned that Apple could only dodge questions about lacklustre sales of its Watch, falling average selling prices for the iPhone and challenges in faster-growing markets such as China and India for so long. “You can waffle through one quarter,” she said, but for shares to stay above the $100 mark, “this is not the kind of call they can have every quarter. It’s just not going to fly.”
尽管这一对未来的展望似乎令投资者激动不已，米拉内西却警告称，回避策略只能帮苹果到这里了——对于苹果手表的疲软销售、iPhone平均售价的下滑、在中国和印度等增长较快市场上面临的挑战招致的种种质疑，苹果一直避而不答。她说，“你可以糊弄过一个季度”，然而要让股价保持在100美元关口以上，“每个季度都这样对付他们是不行的。蒙混不过去的。”
