智能手机大战 The Great Smartphone War

文章来源：《名利场》杂志
原文链接：http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/06/apple-samsung-smartphone-patent-war
撰文：库尔特·埃痕瓦尔特
编译：斯眉

The Great Smartphone War
智能手机大战

For three years, Apple and Samsung have clashed on a scale almost unprecedented in business history, their legal war costing more than a billion dollars and spanning four continents. Beginning with the super-secret project that created the iPhone and the late Steve Jobs’s fury when Samsung—an Apple supplier!—brought out a shockingly similar device, Kurt Eichenwald explores the Korean company’s record of patent infringement, among other ruthless business tactics, and explains why Apple might win the battles but still lose the war.
三年来苹果和三星之间冲突不断，司法诉讼耗资逾十亿美元，战火蔓延到四大洲，其规模在商业历史上几乎史无前例。两家公司关系恶化起源于发明iPhone智能手机的绝密计划，后来，当苹果的供应商之一——三星公司推出了惊人相似的移动设备时，已故苹果总裁史蒂夫·乔布斯暴怒不已，决定追究到底。本文作者库尔特·埃痕瓦尔特为您记录了韩国公司专利侵权的全过程及其他无情的经营策略，揭示了为什么苹果即使胜诉，还是会输掉整场战争。

On August 4, 2010, amid the bustle of downtown Seoul, a small group of executives from Apple Inc. pushed through the revolving door into a blue-tinted, 44-story glass tower, ready to fire the first shot in what would become one of the bloodiest corporate wars in history. The showdown had been brewing since spring, when Samsung launched the Galaxy S, a new entry into the smartphone market. Apple had snagged one early overseas and gave it to the iPhone team at its Cupertino, California, headquarters. The designers studied it with growing disbelief. The Galaxy S, they thought, was pure piracy. The overall appearance of the phone, the screen, the icons, even the box looked the same as the iPhone’s. Patented features such as “rubber-banding,” in which a screen image bounces slightly when a user tries to scroll past the bottom, were identical. Same with “pinch to zoom,” which allows users to manipulate image size by pinching the thumb and forefinger together on the screen. And on and on.
2010年8月4日，在首尔市中心的喧嚣声中，一小群来自美国苹果公司的高管推开了旋转门，走进一座44层蓝色玻璃高塔，准备为历史上最为血腥的企业大战打响第一枪。对决由来已久，自从春季韩国三星公司的新款Galaxy S手机在智能手机市场上横空出世，摊牌行动就在酝酿之中。此前，苹果的人已在海外截获一款三星产品，交给驻扎在加州库比蒂诺总部的iPhone团队。在设计师对其加以研究的过程中，心中的疑惑不断扩大。他们认为Galaxy S纯属盗版——手机的整体外观、屏幕、按键，甚至机壳都与iPhone别无二致，而且连许多专利功能也被抄袭，其中包括“橡皮筋”和“捏拉缩放”，前者是指用户将手指从触摸屏顶部滑至底部时，数字页面会像“橡皮筋”一样自动回弹，后者则意味着用户可以在屏幕上将拇指和食指并用，即可实现图片尺寸的放大和缩小。

Steve Jobs, Apple’s mercurial chief executive, was furious. His teams had toiled for years creating a breakthrough phone, and now, Jobs fumed, a competitor—an Apple supplier no less!—had stolen the design and many features. Jobs and Tim Cook, his chief operating officer, had spoken with Samsung president Jay Y. Lee in July to express their concern about the similarities of the two phones but received no satisfactory response.
能言善辩的苹果首席执行官史蒂夫·乔布斯震怒了！他的团队厉兵秣马，辛勤耕耘多年，才创造出一款突破性手机，而如今，他的竞争对手——区区一家苹果供应商——竟然剽窃了自己的设计和诸多功能，怎不令人火冒三丈！7月，乔布斯及其手下首席运营官蒂姆·库克与三星总裁李在榕通了电话，表达了对两款手机相似性的关切，但未得到满意答复。

After weeks of delicate dancing, of smiling requests and impatient urgings, Jobs decided to take the gloves off. Hence the meeting in Seoul. The Apple executives were escorted to a conference room high in the Samsung Electronics Building, where they were greeted by about half a dozen Korean engineers and lawyers. Dr. Seungho Ahn, a Samsung vice president, was in charge, according to court records and people who attended the meeting. After some pleasantries, Chip Lutton, then Apple’s associate general counsel for intellectual property, took the floor and put up a PowerPoint slide with the title “Samsung’s Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones.” Then he went into some of the similarities he considered especially outrageous, but the Samsung executives showed no reaction. So Lutton decided to be blunt.
经过几周深藏不露的旁敲侧击、言辞和善的微笑请求和耐心渐失的催促逼迫后，乔布斯决定动真格的。于是便有着此次首尔会议。苹果高管被引领到三星电子大楼高层的会议室，六七名韩国工程师和律师在那里欢迎来宾。根据法庭记录和与会人员的回忆，三星方面由副总裁安胜浩博士负责接待。一番寒暄之后，时任苹果公司知识产权副总法律顾问的奇普·拉顿首先发言，展示了一套题为《三星使用苹果智能手机专利》的幻灯片。随后，他谈到一些他认为特别离谱的相似特征，但三星高管对此毫无反应。所以，拉顿决定直言不讳了。

“Galaxy copied the iPhone,” he said.
“What do you mean, copied?” Ahn replied.
“Exactly what I said,” Lutton insisted. “You copied the iPhone. The similarities are completely beyond the possibility of coincidence.”
Ahn would have none of it. “How dare you say that,” he snapped. “How dare you accuse us of that!” He paused, then said, “We’ve been building cell phones forever. We have our own patents, and Apple is probably violating some of those.”
“Galaxy抄袭了iPhone，”他说。
“你是什么意思，抄袭？”安胜浩回答。
“我的意思正是如此，”拉顿坚持。“你们抄袭了iPhone。相似之处数不胜数，根本不可能是巧合。”
安胜浩不予理睬。“你怎么敢这么说，”他厉声说道。“你怎么敢诬陷我们！”他停顿了一下，接着说，“我们一直在生产手机，我们有自己的专利，苹果很可能违反了其中一些。”

The message was clear. If Apple executives pursued a claim against Samsung for stealing the iPhone, Samsung would come right back at them with a theft claim of its own. The battle lines were drawn. In the months and years that followed, Apple and Samsung would clash on a scale almost unprecedented in the business world, costing the two companies more than a billion dollars and engendering millions of pages of legal papers, multiple verdicts and rulings, and more hearings.
他的意思很明确。如果苹果高管针对三星盗版iPhone提起诉讼、要求索赔，三星将“以其人之道，还治其人之身”，要求苹果为侵犯三星专利而付出代价。战线由此拉开。在接下来的几个月和未来几年内，苹果和三星之间爆发了商业世界几乎前所未有的冲突大战，共计耗资超过十亿美元，法律文件长达数百万计页，还有众多判决和裁定，以及更多的听证会。

But that may have been Samsung’s intent all along. According to various court records and people who have worked with Samsung, ignoring competitors’ patents is not uncommon for the Korean company. And once it’s caught it launches into the same sort of tactics used in the Apple case: countersue, delay, lose, delay, appeal, and then, when defeat is approaching, settle. “They never met a patent they didn’t think they might like to use, no matter who it belongs to,” says Sam Baxter, a patent lawyer who once handled a case for Samsung. “I represented [the Swedish telecommunications company] Ericsson, and they couldn’t lie if their lives depended on it, and I represented Samsung and they couldn’t tell the truth if their lives depended on it.”
但是，这也许是三星有意为之。根据不同的法庭记录和三星合作者的叙述，在这家韩国公司，忽略竞争对手的专利绝非鲜见之事。一旦被捉，三星就会运用在苹果案例中一再上演的战术：反诉、拖延、败诉、拖延、上诉，然后当失败不可避免之际，请求和解。“他们从来没有遇到过他们认为不可使用的专利，不管它属于谁，”萨姆·巴克斯特说，他曾三星公司打理过一桩诉讼。“我代理过（瑞典电信公司）爱立信，他们不能撒谎，因为他们诚信至上。我也代理过三星，他们不能说实话，因为他们以欺诈为生。”

Samsung executives say that the pattern of suit-countersuit criticized by some outsiders misrepresents the reality of the company’s approach to patent issues. Because it is one of the largest patent holders in the world, the company often finds others in the technology industry have taken its intellectual property, but it chooses not to file lawsuits to challenge those actions. However, once Samsung itself is sued, the executives say, it will use countersuits as part of a defense strategy.
三星高管表示，外界批评该公司运用起诉-反诉模式处理专利纠纷，实际是在歪曲事实。因为三星公司是世界上最大的专利持有者之一，他们经常发现其他科技公司在使用自己的知识产权，但却选择不诉讼。不过该高管表示，一旦三星公司自身遭到起诉，作为防御战略的一部分，他们将提出反诉。

Apple may well emerge from the legal wrangling as the loser. As the litigation drags on, Samsung has grabbed an increasing share of the market (currently 31 percent versus Apple’s 15.6 percent), not only by pumping out “Apple-ish, only cheaper” technology but by creating its own innovative features and products.
“[Samsung] transitioned to a higher level of competition than they were at at that time, and I think part of that was a result of them having to fight this battle with Apple,” a former senior Apple executive says.
It was really just another page from the Samsung playbook, used many times before: When another company introduces a breakthrough technology, muscle in with less expensive versions of the same product. And the strategy had worked, helping the Samsung Group to grow from almost nothing into an international behemoth.
即使输掉官司，苹果也可能从法律纠纷中全身而退。而对于三星而言，随着诉讼久拖不决，该公司的市场份额不降反升（目前为31%，苹果为15.6％），这不仅由于三星从“酷似苹果，但更便宜”的技术瓶颈中脱颖而出，还在于三星拥有独特的创新功能和产品。

一位前苹果资深高管指出，“与此前相比，如今（三星）已经过渡到更高层次的竞争，我认为这要部分归功于他们不得不与苹果打这场仗。”

在三星的剧本，这真的只不过又翻过了一页，相同的桥段早已演练过很多遍：当另一家公司推出一项突破性技术时，马上生产一款售价更低的相同产品。这种策略一再奏效，帮助三星集团从几近一无所有成长为国际巨头。

Patents Pending
悬而未决的专利

Samsung was founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chull, a college dropout and the son of a wealthy Korean landowning family. When Lee was 26, he used his inheritance to open a rice mill, but the business soon failed. So it was on to a new endeavor, a small fish-and-produce exporting concern that Lee named Samsung (Korean for “three stars”). Over the years that followed, Lee expanded into brewing and then, starting in 1953, added a sugar-refining company, a wool-textile subsidiary, and a couple of insurance businesses.
三星公司是1938年由李秉喆创立的。李秉喆是大学辍学生，出身于富裕的韩国地主家庭。26岁时，他用继承下来的产业开办了一家碾米厂，但不仅生意失败。于是他又再次创业，这一回是一家小型鱼类及鱼类制品出口企业，李秉喆将其命名为三星公司。在随后几年，他的事业拓展到酿酒业，并在1953年，创建了制糖公司、羊毛纺织公司，还经营一些保险业务。

For years, there was nothing in this conglomerate even to hint that Samsung would enter the consumer-electronics business. Then, in 1969, it formed Samsung-Sanyo Electronics, which a year later began manufacturing black-and-white televisions—an outdated product chosen partly because the company didn’t have the technology to make color sets.
多年来，在这家企业集团中，无任何迹象表明三星将进入消费电子领域。然后在1969年，三星三洋电子公司成立，一年后开始生产黑白电视机，这是一种过时产品，之所以选择它，部分原因是该公司没有足够的技术，无法制造彩色电视机。

By the early 1990s, though, the company seemed like an also-ran, after the economic boom in Japan had pushed that nation’s businesses, such as Sony, to the forefront of the technology world; for those even aware of it, Samsung had the reputation for churning out inferior products and cheap knockoffs.
到了20世纪90年代初，虽然公司经营似乎还不太景气，但日本的经济繁荣推动了索尼等日本企业步入技术世界的前沿；对于那些对技术敏感的人来说，三星已经初具声誉，只不过他们大量生产的是劣质和廉价仿冒产品。

Still, some Samsung executives saw a path for boosting profits by boldly and illegally fixing prices with competitors in some of their top businesses. The first products known to have been the focus of one of Samsung’s major price-fixing conspiracies were cathode-ray tubes (C.R.T.’s), which were once the technological standard for televisions and computer monitors. According to investigators in the U.S. and Europe, the scheme was quite structured: competitors secretly got together in what they called “Glass Meetings” at hotels and resorts around the world—in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and at least eight other countries. Some of the meetings involved the most senior executives, while others were for lower-level operational managers. The executives sometimes held what they called “Green Meetings,” characterized by rounds of golf, during which the co-conspirators agreed to raise prices and cut production to receive higher profits than would have been possible had they actually competed with one another. The scheme was eventually exposed, and over the course of 2011 and 2012, Samsung was fined $32 million in the U.S., $21.5 million in South Korea, and $197 million by the European Commission.
尽管如此，三星公司的一些高管已经认识到，在几项最拿手的业务中，只要胆子够大，与竞争对手联手非法操纵价格，就能攫取高额利润。他们首先把价格垄断阴谋的主要目标锁定在阴极射线管，它一度曾是电视和电脑显示器的技术标准。美国和欧洲的调查人员透露，整个机制具有明显的结构化特征：几家竞争对手偷偷聚在一起，参加他们所谓的“玻璃会议”，会议地点设在世界各地的酒店和度假村，涵盖韩国、台湾、新加坡、日本，以及至少其他八个国家。一些会议的与会者大多是最高层管理人员，另一些会议允许较低级别的运营经理参加。高管们有时会举行他们所谓的“绿色会议”，主要活动是打高尔夫，在此期间，同谋者达成协议，提高价格和削减产量，以获得比自由竞争状态下更高的利润。这套机制最终被曝光，在2011年和2012年间，三星在美国被罚款3200万美元，在韩国被罚款2150万美元，欧盟委员会则罚款三星1.97亿美元。

Still, the tales of misconduct at Samsung during the years before those changes involved more than price-fixing. In 2007, its former top legal officer, Kim Yong-chul, who made his name as a star prosecutor in South Korea before joining Samsung, blew the whistle on what he said was massive corruption at the company. He accused senior executives of engaging in bribery, money-laundering, evidence tampering, stealing as much as $9 billion, and other crimes. In essence, Kim, who later wrote a book about his allegations, contended that Samsung was one of the most corrupt companies in the world.
不过，在三星公司被曝出违规操作事件前几年，该公司就涉嫌过比操作价格更为恶劣的勾当。2007年，三星前首席法律顾问金永哲（加入三星前，他曾是韩国的明星检察官）爆料称，该公司内部存在大规模***行为。他指控高管人员参与行贿、洗钱、篡改证据、盗用公款高达90亿美元，以及其他罪行。金永哲后来写了一本书，谈到这些指控，他认为三星是世界上最***的公司之一。

A criminal investigation in Korea ensued, at first focusing on Kim’s allegation that Samsung executives maintained a slush fund to bribe politicians, judges, and prosecutors. In January 2008, government investigators raided the home and office of Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung, who was subsequently convicted of dodging some $37 million in taxes. He was given a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay $89 million in fines. A year and a half later, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak pardoned Lee.
在韩国，刑事调查接踵而至，首先聚焦于金容哲的指控——三星高层一直在贿赂拉拢政客、法官和检察官。2008年1月，政府调查员突袭了三星董事长李健熙的家和办公室，随后李健熙被裁定逃税约 3700 万美元，被判入狱三年，缓期执行，并被责令支付罚金 8900万美元。一年半后，韩国总统李明博赦免了李健熙。

Then there is Samsung’s countersuing strategy, which is legal but unattractive. At the start of 2010, the shareholder letter from Samsung Electronics’ president and chief executive Geesung Choi glistened with good news. The previous 12 months had been an unprecedented success, Choi said. Despite stiff competition, Samsung had become the first company in the history of Korea to post sales greater than $86 billion, while simultaneously achieving some $9.4 billion in operating profits.
再就是三星的反诉策略，虽然合法，但却泛善可陈。2010年初，三星电子的总裁兼首席执行官崔志成在致股东的信中透露出好消息。崔志成在信中写道，在过去12个月里三星取得了空前成功。尽管竞争激烈，三星已成为韩国历史上第一家销售额大于860亿美元的公司，同时实现经营利润约94亿美元。

Choi trumpeted Samsung’s commitment to innovation. “We maintained second place in the number of our U.S. registered patents in 2009, exceeding 3,611, and solidified our foundation to strengthen our next generation technology.”
崔志成大肆鼓吹三星的创新承诺。“2009年，我们注册的美国专利数量依然保持在全球第二位，超过 3611 项，并为强化下一代技术巩固了基础。”

What Choi left out was that Samsung had just suffered a huge defeat, when a court in The Hague ruled that the company illegally copied intellectual property, infringing on patents related to L.C.D. flat-panel technology owned by Sharp, the Japanese electronics concern. In a blow to Samsung, the court ordered that the company halt all European imports of the products that violated the patents. Around the same time as Choi was delivering his upbeat message, the United States International Trade Commission began blocking the importation of Samsung flat-screen products that used the pilfered technology.
崔志成没有提及的是三星刚刚遭受了巨大的失败，海牙法庭裁定该公司非法抄袭日本夏普电子公司的知识产权，侵犯后者的液晶平板技术专利，勒令三星停止向欧洲出口侵权产品，对其造成沉重打击。大约在崔志成向投资者报喜的同一时间，美国国际贸易委员会开始禁止三星向美国输出所有使用剽窃技术的平板产品。

Samsung finally settled with Sharp.
三星与夏普终于尘埃落定。

It was the same old pattern: when caught red-handed, countersue, claiming Samsung actually owned the patent or another one that the plaintiff company had used. Then, as the litigation dragged on, snap up a greater share of the market and settle when Samsung imports were about to be barred. Sharp had filed its lawsuit in 2007; as the lawsuit played out, Samsung built up its flat-screen business until, by the end of 2009, it held 23.6 percent of the global market in TV sets, while Sharp had only 5.4 percent. All in all, not a bad outcome for Samsung.
老把戏再次上演：被人赃俱获后三星提出反诉，声称他们实际拥有原告曾使用过的专利。然后诉讼一拖再拖，三星随即抢占更大的市场份额，在即将被禁止进口之际，三星才要求和解。夏普于 2007 年提交了诉讼文件；在诉讼受理期间，三星已建立起液晶屏幕业务，直到2009年年底，该公司所持有的全球电视机市场份额已达23.6％ ，而夏普只为5.4％。不管怎样，对三星来说，这都不是一个坏的结果。

The same thing happened with Pioneer, a Japanese multi-national that specializes in digital entertainment products, which holds patents related to plasma televisions. Samsung once again decided to use the technology without bothering to pay for it. In 2006, Pioneer sued in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas, so Samsung countersued. The Samsung claim was thrown out before trial, but one document revealed in the course of the litigation was particularly damaging—a memo from a Samsung engineer stating explicitly that the company was violating the Pioneer patent. A jury awarded Pioneer $59 million in 2008. But with appeals and continued battles looming, the financially troubled Pioneer agreed to settle with Samsung for an undisclosed amount in 2009. By then, it was too late. In 2010, Pioneer shut down its television operations, tossing 10,000 people out of work.
同样的戏码又用在先锋身上。先锋公司是一家日本跨国企业，专门从事数字娱乐产品的生产销售，拥有等离子电视的专利。三星再次决定不付专利费就使用先锋的技术。2006年，先锋向德克萨斯州东部地区联邦法院起诉三星，于是三星反诉先锋。三星在审判之前已提交反诉文件，但在诉讼过程中发现一个文件对其非常不利。那是一份来自三星工程师的备忘录，其中明确指出三星违反了先锋的专利。2008年，陪审团裁定三星向先锋支付赔偿金5900万美元。但在接下来的上诉和明争暗斗中，经济陷入困境的先锋被迫同意与三星达成和解，但未透露和解金额。可惜的是此刻为时已晚。2010 年，先锋关闭了电视业务，裁员一万人。

Around the same time, Kodak also got fed up with Samsung’s shenanigans. It filed suit against the Korean company, contending that it was stealing Kodak’s patented digital imaging technology to use in mobile phones. Once again, Samsung countersued and agreed to pay royalties only after the International Trade Commission found for Kodak.
大约在同一时期，柯达也厌倦了三星的恶作剧，起诉这家韩国公司在手机中盗用柯达的数字成像技术专利。三星再次祭出反诉杀手锏，只是在发现国际贸易委员会将力挺柯达后，才同意支付专利费。

It was a clever business model. But everything changed when Apple introduced the iPhone, because Samsung wasn’t ready for the technology to advance so dramatically, so quickly.
无疑，这是一套聪明的商业模式。但是，当苹果推出 iPhone智能手机时，一切都改变了，因为三星还没准备好要如此快速、如此大规模地采用这项技术。

The Purple Dorm
紫色宿舍

The Purple Dorm smelled like pizza.
紫色宿舍的气味闻起来好像比萨饼。

Occupying a building at Apple’s headquarters, in Cupertino, the Dorm—so named because the employees were there 24-7 amid the ever present odor of fast food—was the site of the company’s most secretive undertaking, code-named Project Purple. Under way since 2004, the effort constituted one of the biggest gambles in the history of the company: a cell phone with full Internet, e-mail functions, plus a host of unprecedented features.
在苹果公司的库比蒂诺总部有一座建筑名为“宿舍”，如此命名是因为员工一周 7 天每天 24 小时都呆在那里，房间永远透着一股快餐食品的气味。这里是公司最隐秘的地方，也是“紫色项目”的研发地点。自 2004 年来，参加项目的员工在此夜以继日，为苹果历史上最大的赌博尽心竭力——他们将开发一款全新智能手机，不仅具有完整的上网和电子邮件功能，还包括许多前所未闻的特点。

Executives had pitched the idea of developing a phone to Jobs for years, but he had remained a skeptic. There were already so many mobile phones on the market, manufactured by companies with a lot of experience in the business—Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson—that Apple would have to develop something revolutionary to win a seat at the table.
With Apple’s development of multi-touch glass, in November 2004, Jobs gave the green light for Apple to set aside the tablet project and go full force into developing the iPhone.
多年来，苹果高管一直向乔布斯提议开发手机，但他仍持怀疑态度。市场上已经有这么多移动手机，都是由一些经验丰富的公司生产的，如摩托罗拉、诺基亚、三星、爱立信，苹果必须开发出革命性的产品，才有可能赢得一席之地。

随着苹果在多点触摸屏幕开发中取得进展，2004 年 11 月，乔布斯同意搁置平板电脑项目，全力开发iPhone。

Secrecy, Jobs ordered, was paramount. Apple was already known as a tight-lipped company, but this time the stakes were even higher. He issued unusual marching orders: No one could be hired from outside the company for Project Purple. No one inside the company could be told that Apple was developing a mobile phone. All of the work—design, engineering, testing, everything—would have to be conducted in super-secure, locked-down offices. Scott Forstall, a senior vice president named by Jobs to head up software development for the new phone, was forced by the restrictions to persuade Apple employees to join Project Purple without even telling them what it was.
乔布斯下令，保密至关重要。苹果在业内是出了名的守口如瓶，但是这一次的赌注更高。他发布了异乎寻常的行动指令：不准任何外聘人员参与“紫色项目”、不准将“苹果正在开发手机”的消息告诉公司任何人。所有工作——设计、工程、测试、一切一切——都必须在一间超级安全、封锁的办公室内进行。乔布斯任命斯科特·福斯代尔为新款手机软件开发部高级副总裁，后者必须说服苹果员工参加“紫色项目”，却不可泄露该项目的庐山真面目。

The new team moved into the Purple Dorm, at first a single floor, but the space quickly grew as more employees came on board. To reach certain computer labs, a person had to pass through four locked doors, which opened with badge readers. Cameras kept constant watch. And right on the front door, to remind everyone of the importance of secrecy, they hung a sign that said, FIGHT CLUB—a reference to the 1999 movie Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club, a character in the film says, is that no one talks about Fight Club.
新团队搬进了“紫色宿舍”，起初只住在一层楼，但随着更多员工的加入，空间迅速扩大。要到达某间计算机实验室，必须经过四道上锁的门，每道门锁都需要刷卡进入，摄像头始终处于开启状态。前门右侧挂了一个牌子，时刻提醒大家保密的重要性。牌子上写着“搏击俱乐部”，指的是1999年的电影《搏击俱乐部》。片中搏击俱乐部的第一条规则是“不许谈论搏击俱乐部”。

A group of about 15 employees, many of whom had worked together for more than a dozen years, made up the design team. For brainstorming sessions, they gathered around a kitchen table inside the Dorm, tossing out ideas and then drafting designs in sketchbooks, on loose-leaf paper, on computer printouts. The ideas that survived team-wide critiques were passed on to the computer-aided-design group, which sculpted the sketch data into a computer-based model. Then on to three-dimensional construction, with the rough product turned back over to the design team at their kitchen table.
约有15名员工组成一支设计团队，其中一些人已经共事了十几年。举行头脑风暴会议的时候，他们在“宿舍”内围着餐桌，苦思冥想出不同的想法，然后在速写本上画出设计草图，再放到电脑里打印出来。经过全组人的“吹毛求疵”后，幸存下来的想法被传递给电脑辅助设计小组，后者负责将草图制成电脑模型。下一步是3D建模，最后，制作出的小样重新回到设计团队手中。

The process was used hundreds of times; as many as 50 attempts were made on a single button for the phone, according to Christopher Stringer, an industrial designer on the team. They wrestled with the details for the edge of the phone, its corners, its height, its width. One of the earliest models, code-named the M68, had the word “iPod” imprinted on the back, in part to disguise what the product really was.
据工业设计师克里斯托弗·斯金格回忆，这种过程经历了数百次，光是对于手机的一个按钮就进行了多达 50 次尝试。他们为手机的边缘细节、转角、高度、宽度而反复纠结。最早的一个模型代号为M68 ，机器背面印着“iPod”字样，为的是掩盖这款产品的真实身份。

The software engineering was equally complicated. Forstall and his team were looking to create the illusion that the user could actually reach through the touch-screen glass to manipulate the content behind it. Finally, by January 2007, Jobs announce the new Apple phone in his keynote for the annual Macworld trade conference, in San Francisco, As the crowd cheered, the screen behind Jobs lit up with the word “iPhone.” Beneath that, it read, “Apple reinvents the phone.”
软件工程的工作同样错综复杂。福斯代尔和他的团队需要开发出一种让用户通过触摸屏幕操纵内容的方法。2007年1月，乔布斯终于准备在旧金山的年度 Macworld 贸易会议上宣布推出 iPhone，在人们的欢呼声中，乔布斯身后的大屏幕亮出“ iPhone ”字样，在它下面有一行字写着 “苹果再改了手机”。

At first, it seemed they were right. In the first nine months of fiscal 2008, sales were under half of what Jobs had predicted. But then—blastoff. In the final quarter Apple introduced the second-generation model, called the iPhone 3G; demand was so huge, it could scarcely restock the shelves fast enough. Apple sold more phones in those three months—6.9 million units—than it had for the previous nine. By the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, the total number of iPhones sold since its introduction surpassed 30 million units. Apple, which three years before had been nothing, snagged 16 percent of the total market for smartphone sales worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2009, placing it as the third largest company in the business. Meanwhile, at Samsung, no one was popping champagne corks over the company’s smartphone sales. In that quarter, the company wasn’t even in the top five. In a report by I.D.C., an industry research firm, Samsung’s total smartphone sales were bundled under the category “Other.”
起初他们看起来是对的。2008年财年的前九个月，iPhone 销量不到预期的一半。但此后开始飙升。第四季度苹果公司推出第二代 iPhone，即iPhone 3G，需求迅速放大，补货都来不及了，几乎入不敷出。在那三个月里，苹果售出690万台iPhone，比前九个月的总销售量还高。截至 2009财年第四季度结束时，iPhone的销售总数已超过3000 万台。2009年第四季度，苹果在全球智能手机销量中赢得16％的市场份额，成为第三大手机公司。与此同时，三星的智能手机销量却没什么值得庆贺的。2009年第四季度，三星的手机业务甚至没有进入全球前五名。行业研究公司IDC的一份报告中显示，三星的智能手机总销量已被归为“其他”类别。

Galaxy Quest
Galaxy探秘

Twenty-eight executives from Samsung’s mobile-communications division crowded into the Gold Conference Room on the 10th floor of the company’s headquarters. It was 9:40 A.M. on February 10, 2010, a Wednesday, and the meeting had been called to assess a near-crisis situation at Samsung. The company’s phones were losing favor, the user experience was poor, and the iPhone—after all those months of industry pooh-poohing—was blowing the doors off the barn. Samsung’s cell-phone business was strong, and it was continuing to churn out several designs every year. But the company was simply not competing with its smartphones, and Apple had now set a new direction for that business.
三星移动通讯部门的28位高管在公司总部10楼的金色会议室集中。时间是2010年2月10日周三上午，此次会议的目的是评估三星的濒危局势。三星手机逐渐失去消费者的青睐，用户体验很糟糕。而iPhone手机表现抢眼，尽管此前几个月，业内对它只是冷眼相当，但显而易见，苹果产品来势汹汹，颇有摧枯拉朽之势。三星的手机业务强劲，每年还能推出多种设计方案。但该公司的智能手机根本毫无竞争力，而苹果现在已在引领智能手机业务的新方向。

“All this time, we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia … yet when our [user experience] is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth.”
Samsung was at a crossroads. “It’s a crisis of design,” the executive said.
Across Samsung, the message was heard: the company needed to come out with its own “iPhone”—something beautiful and easy to use with just that dollop of “cool”—and fast. Emergency teams were thrown together, and for three months designers and engineers worked under enormous pressure. For some employees, the work was so demanding they got only two to three hours of sleep a night.
一名三星高管表示，“这段时间，我们的所有关注重点都放在诺基亚产品上......然而，当我们的（用户体验）跟意想不到的竞争对手 iPhone 相比，简直可谓天壤之别。”三星正处于十字路口。“这是一种设计危机。”

三星上下都听到这样的消息：公司需要尽快拿出了自己的“iPhone ” ——美观时尚、易于使用的智能手机。他们组建了一支紧急团队，设计师和工程师顶着巨大压力工作了三个月。一些员工因为工作太过劳神，晚上只有两三个小时的睡眠时间。

By March 2, the company’s Product Engineering Team had completed a feature-by-feature analysis of the iPhone, comparing it to the Samsung smartphone under construction. The group assembled a 132-page report for their bosses, explaining in detail every way the Samsung phone fell short. A total of 126 instances were found where the Apple phone was better.
3月2日，三星的产品工程团队已经完成了iPhone的功能分析报告，与三星智能手机的各项功能逐一比较。该团队制定了一份 132 页的报告，从每一个细节着手，解读三星手机不及iPhone的具体原因，其中的126个理由足以证明苹果手机更有优势。

No feature was too small for comparison. A calculator image could be made bigger on the iPhone by rotating the device in any direction; not so with Samsung’s. On the iPhone, the calendar function for the day’s schedule was legible, the numbers on the image of the phone keypad were easy to see, ending a call was simple, the number of open Web pages was displayed on-screen, Wi-Fi connection was established on a single screen, new-e-mail notices were obvious, and so on. None of these were true for the Samsung phones, the engineers concluded.
这份报告事无巨细。比如旋转设备时，iPhone上的计算器图标可以变得更大；三星的智能手机则不行。iPhone的日历功可把当天的日程安排清晰地显示出来，手机按键图标上的数字很容易看清，结束通话很简单，打开网页的数量可在屏幕上显示，在单一屏幕上即可建立Wi-Fi连接，新的电子邮件通知很显眼等等，这些都是三星手机缺少的。

Bit by bit, the new model for a Samsung smartphone began to look—and function—just like the iPhone. Icons on the home screen had similarly rounded corners, size, and false depth created by a reflective shine across the image. The icon for the phone function went from being a drawing of a keypad to a virtually identical reproduction of the iPhone’s image of a handset. The bezel with the rounded corners, the glass spreading out across the entire face of the phone, the home button at the bottom—all of it almost the same.
一点一点地，三星智能手机的新机型看起来越来越像iPhone，无论是外观还是功能。主屏幕上的图标了有类似的圆角，尺寸大小相近，甚至连反射光线掠过图像时所造成的阴影效果也都模仿到位。手机功能图标从一张键盘图纸变为与iPhonr几乎一模一样的复制品。圆角的边框、整个手机的玻璃表面、底部的主页键……一切的一切差不多都是原样不动地从iPhone上扒下来的。

In fact, some industry executives worried about the similarities. Earlier, on February 15, a senior designer at Samsung told other employees about such observations from Google executives at a meeting with the Korean company—they suggested that changes be made in certain Galaxy devices, which they thought looked too much like Apple’s iPhone and iPad. The next day, a Samsung designer e-mailed others at the company about the Google comments. “Since it is too similar to Apple, make it noticeably different, starting with the front side,” the message said.
事实上，一些业内高管对这些相似之处不无担心。此前在2月15日，一位三星资深设计师跟其他员工说，在谷歌高管与这家韩国公司会面时，曾提到过同样的看法——建议将部分 Galaxy 机型稍作改动，他们认为，这些设备看起来太像苹果iPhone和iPad了。第二天，三星设计师通过电子邮件将谷歌的评论传达给公司其他人。 “既然说跟苹果太相似了，那么我们就在正面做出些明显差异吧。”

By late the following month, Samsung was ready to hold its own version of the Jobs press conference. On March 23, crowds at the Las Vegas Convention Center for the CTIA Wireless trade show gathered in the keynote hall. Lights bathed the stage in a sheet of blue as the attendees found their seats. Then J. K. Shin, the head of Samsung’s mobile-communications unit, came onto the stage.
下个月的月底，三星准备举行三星版的乔布斯发布会。 3月23日，观众聚集在拉斯维加斯会展中心的发布会大厅。当与会者寻找自己的座位时，蓝色灯光洒满舞台，接着，三星移动业务主管申宗均走上前来。

He reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and brought out a phone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Samsung Galaxy S!” Shin held up the device, displaying it for the applauding crowd.
Despite the previous month’s e-mail to change up the appearance of Samsung’s Galaxy products, it still looked almost identical to the iPhone. Except the name “Samsung” was emblazoned across the top.
他把手伸进外套胸前的口袋，拿出一款手机。“女士们、先生们，我向你们介绍三星的 Galaxy S！”申宗均举起手机，向鼓掌的人群展示着。

尽管上个月已经发了电子邮件说要改变三星Galaxy产品的外观，但现在看来，它依然是iPhone的“孪生兄弟”，除了顶部印着“三星”的名称。

‘We’ve been ripped off.”
“我们被抄袭了。”

Christopher Stringer, one of the iPhone designers, looked at the Galaxy S in near disbelief. All that time, he thought, all that effort trying out hundreds of designs, experimenting with the size of the glass, drawing different icons and buttons, and then these guys at Samsung just take it?
iPhone设计师之一克里斯托弗·斯金格看着Galaxy S，不敢相信自己的眼睛。此时此刻他所想到的是，所有努力（包括尝试了几百种设计方案、试验过多种屏幕尺寸、绘制出不同的图标和按钮）都前功尽弃了吗？都被三星那些家伙轻而易举地抄袭了吗？

But about a month after the Galaxy S reached the market overseas, Jobs began focusing on what he considered to be the Korean company’s theft of Apple’s ideas. He wanted to play hardball with Samsung’s top executives, but Tim Cook, his chief operating officer and soon-to-be successor, cautioned against being too aggressive just yet. After all, Samsung was one of Apple’s biggest suppliers of processors, display screens, and other items. Alienating it might put Apple in the position of losing parts it needed for its products—including some for the iPhone and the iPad.
在Galaxy S在海外市场现身约一个月后，乔布斯开始关注此事，他认为三星盗窃了苹果的创意。他想对三星来硬的了，但当时的首席营运官、也是他不久之后的继任者蒂姆·库克告诫他不要过于激进，时机未到，毕竟三星是苹果最大的处理器、屏幕面板和其他零件的供应商之一。疏远它可能致使苹果失去产品所需的零件，其中一些关乎iPhone 和iPad的生产。

Then, in late March 2011, Samsung introduced its latest tablet computer, this time with a 10-inch screen. It struck Apple executives as a knockoff of the company’s second version of its tablet, and they weren’t surprised: Samsung had already proclaimed that it would change its own model to rival the iPad 2.
之后在2011年3月底，三星推出了最新平板电脑，配备 10 英寸显示屏。苹果高管的第一反应是，这是一款抄袭 iPad 2的山寨货，对此他们并不感到意外：三星事先早已表态，将改进自己的平板电脑，与iPad 2一争高下。

Cook’s caution was shoved aside. On April 15, 2011, the company filed a federal lawsuit in California against Samsung for infringing on the patents of both the iPhone and the iPad. Samsung was apparently ready for Apple’s attack—it countersued days later in Korea, Japan, Germany, and the U.S., alleging that the American company had violated Samsung patents related to mobile-communication technologies. Eventually, a variety of suits and motions were filed by the companies in Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and the Netherlands, as well as in a federal court in Delaware, and with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C.
库克的谨慎被搁到一边。2011年4月15日，苹果在加州对三星提出一项联邦诉讼，称三星侵犯iPhone和iPad的专利。三星显然已做好迎战苹果的准备，相继在韩国、日本、德国和美国提出反诉，声称苹果违反了他们的移动通信技术专利。最终，各种诉讼文件和动议被提交给英国、法国、意大利、西班牙、澳大利亚、荷兰的法院，以及美国特拉华州联邦法院，还有华盛顿特区的美国国际贸易委员会。

Phone Tag
手机标签

One day in March 2011, cars carrying investigators from Korea’s anti-trust regulator pulled up outside a Samsung facility in Suwon, about 25 miles south of Seoul. They were there ready to raid the building, looking for evidence of possible collusion between the company and wireless operators to fix the prices of mobile phones.
2011年3月的一天，韩国反垄断监管机构的汽车停在三星公司的水原工厂外。调查人员准备搜查三星办公室，寻找三星涉嫌与无线运营商勾结、操纵手机价格的证据。

Before the investigators could get inside, security guards approached and refused to let them through the door. A standoff ensued, and the investigators called the police, who finally got them inside after a 30-minute delay. Curious about what had been happening in the plant as they cooled their heels outside, the officials seized video from internal security cameras. What they saw was almost beyond belief.
调查人员刚准备入内，保安上前拦住了他们。僵持30分钟后，调查人员报了警，最终才得以进入。调查人员从内部安全摄像机截获了视频，所看到的情景几乎令人难以置信。

Upon getting word that investigators were outside, employees at the plant began destroying documents and switching computers, replacing the ones that were being used—and might have damaging material on them—with others.
当调查人员还在门外时，工厂员工便开始销毁文件和更换电脑，替换正在使用的电脑，并可能已销毁了电脑里的资料。

A year later, Korean newspapers reported that the government had fined Samsung for obstructing the investigation at the facility. At the time, a legal team representing Apple was in Seoul to take depositions in the Samsung case, and they read about the standoff. From what they heard, one of the Samsung employees there had even swallowed documents before the investigators were allowed in. That certainly didn’t bode well for Apple’s case; how, the Apple lawyers said half-jokingly among themselves, could they possibly compete in a legal forum with employees who were so loyal to the company that they were willing to eat incriminating evidence?
一年后韩国纸媒报道称，三星公司因阻挠调查而受到韩国政府的处罚。当时，一支代表苹果的法律团队正在韩国首尔为三星一案取证，在报纸上读到了此次对峙事件的经过。他们听说，在调查人员进门前，三星的一名员工甚至将文件吞进肚里。这当然不能帮助苹果赢得官司。苹果律师半开玩笑地说，三星拥有如此忠诚的员工，愿意吃掉罪证，苹果怎么可能打赢三星？

No one can claim a total victory in the global litigation wars. In South Korea, a court ruled that Apple had infringed two Samsung patents, while Samsung had violated one of Apple’s. In Tokyo, a court rejected an Apple patent claim and ordered it to pay Samsung’s court costs. In Germany, a court ordered a direct sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1, ruling that it too closely resembled Apple’s iPad 2. In Britain, a court ruled in favor of Samsung, declaring that its tablets were “not as cool” as the iPad, and unlikely to confuse consumers. A California jury found that Samsung had violated Apple patents for the iPhone and iPad, awarding more than a billion dollars in damages—an amount that the judge later ruled had been miscalculated by the jury. In the debate over setting the damages, a Samsung lawyer said they were not disputing that the company had indeed taken “some elements of Apple’s property.”
在全球诉讼战中，没有人能大获全胜。在韩国，法院裁定苹果侵犯了三星的两项专利，三星则侵犯了苹果的一项专利。在东京，法院驳回了苹果的专利诉讼，责令其支付三星的诉讼费用。在德国，法院下令直接禁售 Galaxy Tab 10.1，裁定它太酷似于苹果iPad 2。在英国，法院作出有利于三星的裁定，宣布三星的平板电脑“不如iPad那么酷”，而且不太可能迷惑消费者。加州陪审团裁定，三星侵犯了苹果的iPhone和iPad专利，三星需赔偿苹果超过十亿美元的损失，但在后来的裁定中，陪审团承认存在计算错误。在围绕损失的争论中，一位三星律师说，三星确实采纳了“苹果产权的一些元素”，对此他们没有争议。

The endless fighting has been a drain on the company, both emotionally and financially.
无休无止的官司战让苹果精疲力竭，无论是在感情上，还是在经济上。

Despite his role in propelling the lawsuits forward, Jobs, who died in 2011, by now might have looked at the scorched earth left behind by the litigation and followed his own advice about recognizing when it is time to move on. “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ ” Jobs said in a now famous commencement speech he gave at Stanford University, in 2005. “And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
乔布斯于2011年去世，尽管他一直迫不及待与三星打官司，但如果此刻他还在世，看到诉讼战火洗掠后留下的片片焦土，他可能会意识到，是时候向前看了。2005年，乔布斯在斯坦福大学发表了一篇著名的演讲，其中提到： “每天早晨我都会对着镜子问自己：‘如果今天是我生命的最后一天，我还会不会想做今天将去做的事？’当连续许多天这个问题的答案一直是‘不’时，我就知道自己要做一些改变了。”

After more than 1,000 days of litigation, hopefully one morning soon executives at Samsung and Apple will look at their reflection and, at long last, hit their limit of “no”s.
经过 1000 多天的诉讼，希望某天清晨三星和苹果的高管能够反思，最后决定突破极限，做出改变。