When Steve Jobs died in 2011, iPhone sales were still doubling year on year. It is a safe bet that his successor, Tim Cook, is going to preside over the end of continuous growth. In quarterly earnings in two weeks, analysts still expect Apple to have sold 1m or more phones than the 74.5m it achieved in the same quarter last year, with Chinese demand crucial. If it turns out that Apple has sold fewer, it will be a blow to the credibility of Mr Cook, who primed the market to expect growth. But the timing hardly matters. If it is not coming this quarter, the decline is priced in for the next one.
2011年史蒂夫吠布斯(Steve Jobs)去世的时候，iPhone销量还在翻番地增长。几乎可以肯定，他的继任者蒂姆錠克(Tim Cook)将在任期内眼看着这股持续增长势头终结。苹果将于两周内发布季度财报，分析师们仍预期iPhone销量将比去年同期的7450万部增加100万部以上，其中中国的需求是关键。如果销量下滑，将对库克本人的信誉造成打击，因为他事先放出的风声让市场认为增长可期。但时间点并不重要，如果这个季度销量没有下滑，投资者也预期下个季度就会下滑。
So what? For all its “fanboy” customers, Apple has some Jeremiah shareholders. Since it reported the most profitable quarter in corporate history 12 months ago, its shares have fallen 15 per cent. Yet the stock trades at just 10 times forward earnings. Strip out the massive cash pile and it trades at less than 8 times. Investors know that the end of rampant growth is nigh.
所以呢？尽管果粉众多，一些股东却抱着悲观态度。自12个月前报告公司史上最盈利的季度业绩以来，苹果股价下跌了15%。然而该公司股票的市盈率仅为10倍。如果不算大量的现金储备，市盈率还不到8倍。投资者知道，迅猛的增长快要结束了。
Having risen to well over 50 per cent of group revenues, of course the iPhone matters. But maturity does not mean extinction, and just because Apple has become a phone company does not mean that it is all it ever will be.
iPhone对集团营收的贡献已经远高于50%，当然十分重要。但成熟并不意味着一定会走向消亡，仅仅因为苹果成了一家手机公司也并不意味着它将永远只是一家手机公司。
The important metric for measuring iPhone success over the next couple of years is not how many iPhones are sold in a particular quarter — but how long those phones last. Apple hopes that more consumers will switch to its new upgrade programme, which incentivises them to buy a device every 12 months. Part of the bull case outlined by Mr Cook three months ago was the relatively small number of iPhone users who had upgraded to the iPhone 6 — fewer than 35 per cent.
在接下来几年，衡量iPhone是否成功，关键不是看某个季度卖出了多少部iPhone，而要看手机换代的时间。苹果希望更多消费者升级其新程序，这将激励他们每12个月买一部手机。3个月前，库克概述了看好苹果的理由，其中之一是升级到iPhone 6的iPhone用户比例相对较小，不到35%。
That cuts both ways, though. A recent survey by Accenture found that the proportion of consumers who expected to buy a smartphone in the next 12 months had fallen to 48 per cent from 54 per cent last year; the drop was particularly severe in China. Another survey by Mizuho found that 81 per cent of iPhone users expected to hang on to their next device for longer, an estimated 27 months compared with 20 months. The iPhone 5 has demonstrated more staying power than previous versions of the device; it has not yet been rendered obsolete by more processing power or killer features from subsequent iterations. In Apple’s sales pitch to worrywart shareholders, that is the wrong sort of iPhone endurance.
不过，此事有利有弊。埃森哲(Accenture)最近的一项调查发现，打算在接下来12个月内购买一部智能手机的消费者比例从去年的54%降至48%；在中国下滑得更厉害。瑞穗银行(Mizuho)的另一项调查发现，81%的iPhone用户预计下一部手机会使用更长时间，估计比目前所用手机的20个月多7个月。iPhone 5比前几代产品更为经久不衰；之后的产品更强的处理能力或者杀手级特色功能都未能淘汰iPhone 5。在苹果对忧心忡忡的股东的宣传中，iPhone的这种耐久可不是好事。