Tech competition

科技竞争

The rules of the tech game are changing

科技领域的游戏规则正在发生变化

A new phase in the global tech contest is under way

全球科技竞争正在步入新的阶段


The idea of the technology industry being dominated by monopolies is so widely held that it has monopolised much thinking, from investors’ strategies to antitrust watchdogs’ legal briefs. Yet, as we explain, it is getting harder to sustain (see article). After a long period of ossification, the industry is entering a dynamic phase. In America digital markets are shifting towards oligopolies, in which second and third firms compete vigorously against the incumbent. The big tech firms are wrestling over customers and data: witness the confrontation between Apple and Facebook over who controls iPhone users’ privacy. And all across Asia digital conglomerates are battling it out. The industry’s emerging structure is a far cry from the open, diffuse capitalism this newspaper supports. But an oligopoly of rivals is much better than a monopoly.

人们普遍认为科技产业被垄断企业主导,以至于许多想法充斥着这种观念,包括投资者的策略、反垄断机构的诉讼摘要。但正如我们所说的,这种现象越来越难以为继。经过长期僵化后,科技产业正在步入不断变化的阶段。在美国,数字化市场正在向寡头垄断的方向发展,在位企业面临来自第二和第三家企业的激烈竞争。大型科技企业相互争夺客户和数据:苹果和脸书围绕着由谁控制iPhone用户的隐私而展开较量就是明证。在整个亚洲地区,数字化企业集团正在相互一决胜负。科技产业的新兴结构远不是本刊支持的开放、分散的资本主义。然而,寡头垄断总比完全垄断好得多。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


The gale of creative destruction used to blow hard in Silicon Valley. The list of firms toppled from dominance runs from Fairchild Semiconductor to Hewlett-Packard. Yet recently the giants have clung on: Apple and Microsoft are over 40 years old and Alphabet and Amazon over 20; even Facebook is 17 this month. What happened? Network and scale effects mean that size begets size, while data can act as a barrier to entry. Search, social media, advertising, e-commerce, streaming, ride-hailing, delivery and payments all exhibit these alchemical properties to some degree. Having achieved supremacy in their chosen area, many tech firms, especially the big ones, have shown little appetite to compete directly with each other in the past decade. The three most common searches on Microsoft Bing are Facebook, YouTube and Google. Does anyone remember Amazon’s Fire Phone?

创造性破坏曾经盛行于硅谷。从仙童半导体公司到惠普公司,它们已失去往日的主导地位。但近些年来科技巨头站稳了脚跟:苹果和微软已创立40多年,Alphabet和亚马逊已创立20多年;甚至脸书截至本月已创立17年了。什么情况?网络和规模效应意味着规模造就规模,而数据充当入市壁垒的角色。科研、社交媒体、广告、电子商务、流媒体、打车、快递、支付都在一定程度上显示出这些炼金术特征。许多企业尤其是大型企业垄断了各自领域,它们十年来没有相互直接竞争的意愿。人们在微软必应上最常搜索的三个词条是脸谱、油管、谷歌。还有人记得亚马逊推出的Fire Phone手机吗?

At first glance nothing has changed. Tech firms enjoyed a lucrative 2020 and investors are betting more is to come. The $7.6trn market value of America’s five giants implies their sales will double in the next decade. Yet if you look more closely, a shift is under way. The incumbents are not getting smaller—their weighted-average market share is stable, at about 35% across each of 11 American tech subsectors. But the share of second and third firms has risen from 18% to 26% since 2015. This reflects two deeper trends.

乍看起来毫无变化。科技企业在2020年利润丰厚,投资者断定利润将继续增长。美国五大科技巨头的市值达7.6万亿美元,预示着未来十年的销售额将翻一番。但如果你仔细观察,就会发现变化。在位企业的规模不是越来越小——它们的加权平均市场份额稳定,在美国11个科技细分行业中,每个行业的比例都在35%左右。但是2015年以来,第二和第三家企业的市场份额从18%增至26%,这反映出两个更深的趋势。

First, big tech firms are diversifying as their core products mature, new technological opportunities emerge and regulatory threats mount in America, Europe and China. The firms have talked about this for years, but now it is happening. The share of the five American giants’ revenues that overlaps with the others has risen from 22% to 38% since 2015. Microsoft and Alphabet are taking on Amazon in the cloud. Amazon is, in turn, the rising force in digital advertising.

首先,随着核心产品的成熟、新科技机遇的出现、来自美国、欧洲、中国的监管威胁与日俱增,大型科技企业正在走向多元化。企业多年来都在探讨这个问题,但现在发生了。2015年以来,美国五大科技巨头与其他企业重叠的营收比例从22%增至38%。微软和Alphabet正在云服务领域向亚马逊发起挑战,亚马逊反过来成为数字化广告的后起之秀。

The second trend, accounting for a third of the shift in market share, is that outsiders have momentum. From the ranks of the corporate establishment, Disney, aged 98, has acquired 116m new streaming customers in 18 months, while Walmart, aged 58, booked $38bn in online sales last year. Independent tech firms such as Shopify in e-commerce and PayPal have broken through thanks to the digital surge caused by the pandemic, and are generating enough profits to be self-sustaining.

第二个趋势是圈外企业发展迅猛,占据市场份额变化的三分之一。迪斯尼已创立98年,18个月内新增的流媒体用户多达1.16亿。沃尔玛已创立58年,去年网络销售额高达380亿美元。得益于疫情引发的数字化浪潮,独立的科技企业大获成功,例如电子商务领域的Shopify和PayPal,赚取的利润足以自给自足。

You might think that this competition is just a blip, but it has a precedent in Asia, where customers have leapfrogged ahead and the boundaries between products have blurred, leading to market-share shifts, lower margins and innovation. China has Alibaba and Tencent and five other contenders worth $100bn or more. India has Jio and South-East Asia has Grab, Gojek and Sea. All these firms think in terms of subscribers who could be persuaded to buy a fluid range of services, rather than of protecting a static monopoly at all costs. They seek expansion through diversification, even if that means bumping up against rivals.

你可能认为这种竞争只是暂时现象,但亚洲就是先例。那里的消费者经历了跨越式发展,产品之间的界限变得模糊,导致市场份额变化、利润降低、以及创新。中国有阿里巴巴、腾讯、以及其他五家竞争对手,总市值超过1000亿美元。印度有Jio,东南亚有Grab、Gojek、Sea。所有这些企业都从订阅用户的角度思考,可以说服他们购买灵活多变的服务,而非不惜一切代价保护僵化的垄断地位。它们通过多元化发展来谋求扩张,即使这意味着与竞争对手发生冲突。
原创翻译:龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处


One danger is that this oligopolistic rivalry is a Potemkin contest. It has not yet disrupted the Apple-Alphabet duopoly over phone-operating systems or app stores. Although advertisers have more choice, between, say, Amazon and Facebook, those being advertised to still have no real alternative to the products of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss. And there are too many cosy lixs between firms. Alphabet pays Apple up to $12bn a year to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. Alibaba and Tencent own stakes in some of China’s new entrants.

寡头间的较量有变成波将金式竞争的危险,苹果与谷歌在手机操作系统和应用商店方面的双头垄断并没有被打破。尽管广告商在亚马逊和脸书之间有了更多选择,但对于广告受众来说,还没有其他产品可以真正取代脸书总裁马克·扎克伯格的那些产品。企业之间存在太多的暧昧关系,Alphabet公司每年向苹果公司支付120亿美元,使得“谷歌”成为iPhone手机的默认搜索引擎。阿里巴巴和腾讯持有某些中国新入行企业的股票。

This is where resurgent antitrust enforcers can make a difference. Those Google payments are now subject to a Department of Justice lawsuit, while Apple and Google face complaints over their app stores. Europe is planning rules to get different firms’ products to work together and help users move their data around. China has a new list of “the nine do nots” for e-commerce firms, including not shutting out new contenders.

这正是重出江湖的反垄断执法部门可以有所作为的地方。谷歌向苹果支付的费用正在面临美国司法部的诉讼,苹果和谷歌都在应用商店方面面临诉讼。欧洲正在制定法规,让各家公司的产品相互协同,帮助用户迁移数据。中国针对电子商务企业出台了“就不得”规定,包括不得排除新竞争者。

It helps that ambition is plentiful. In attracting business to its cloud platform, Alphabet is losing $6bn a year—more than Amazon has lost in its lifetime. Disney plans to have 325m subscribers by 2024. PayPal intends to have 750m users of its financial super-app by 2025. Walmart has just bought an advertising firm. Facebook is entering e-commerce. Microsoft has considered buying two social-media firms, TikTok and Pinterest. Huawei in China is busy creating an alternative to the ios-Android operating-system duopoly.

充满雄心壮志是有益的。Alphabet公司为了让云平台吸引业务,每年亏损60亿美元——比亚马逊成立以来亏损的总额都多。迪斯尼计划2024年订阅用户数达到3.25亿。PayPal计划2025年超级金融APP的用户数达到7.5亿。沃尔玛不久前收购了一家广告公司。脸书正在涉足电子商务领域。微软考虑收购两家社交媒体公司“字节跳动”和Pinterest。中国的华为忙于创造一种操作系统,旨在取代IOS-安卓双头垄断的操作系统。

Oligopolistic competition could benefit consumers in several ways. It could boost choice as more firms compete to offer an expanding range of services: 11 American firms have over 100m digital subscribers. It could raise standards as platforms differentiate themselves by trust. That is why Apple will soon ask iPhone users if they want to opt out of Facebook’s data-tracking, upending the advertising market (see article). And it could spur innovation as firms search for new tools, such as virtual reality, to control access to the customer.

寡头竞争能给消费者带来多方面的利益。随着更多的企业提供更多的服务,消费者有了更多的选择:11家美国企业拥有超过1亿的订阅用户。随着各家平台凭借用户的信任脱颖而出,标准可能得到提升。这就是为什么苹果公司即将询问iPhone用户是否想要退出脸书的数据追踪,结果将颠覆广告市场。随着企业寻找虚拟现实等新型工具来控制获取用户的渠道,这也会刺激创新。

Back in 2000 few predicted that tech was destined for monopoly, then it became accepted wisdom. Today no one knows if the emerging pattern of oligopolistic rivalry will last or benefit consumers. But the conditions are more promising than they have been for years. Regulators are trying to prise open closed markets, a financial boom means that capital is abundant and a global surge in online activity has boosted demand. A more contested digital economy would be consequential—for markets, consumers and businesses alike. It is looking more likely.

回首2000年,没有人预见到科技必然走向垄断,后来变成了主流观点。如今没有人知道,兴起的寡头竞争是否将持续下去或者有利于消费者。但现在的情况比过去那些年更令人看到希望。监管部门在试图撬开封闭的市场,金融繁荣意味着资金充裕,全球的网络活动激增促进了需求。竞争更加激烈的数字化经济将对市场、消费者、企业产生重大影响,这似乎可能性更大。