經濟學人雙語|熊彼特iSupply（官方譯文）

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Schumpeter

iSupply

The global smartphone supply chain is a modern marvel. But it will have to reinvent itself

FEW monuments to globalisation rival the smartphone industrial complex. This year 1.5bn devices will be made by millions of workers at hundreds of firms in dozens of countries. When you tap your screen you are touching an object just as miraculous as Javanese spices seemed to 16th-century European nobs. In commercial terms the system is too important to fail. But this cosmopolitan wonder faces twin threats: the fading of the smartphone boom and the end of globalisation』s golden era. To assess these risks, Schumpeter has 「stress-tested」 the supply chain』s financial strength. Overall it is in reasonable shape, but a long tail of weak firms provokes concern.

For decades most consumer-electronics companies produced their wares close to home. Nokia hit the big time while churning out handsets from the small town of Salo in Finland. Then in the 1990s a few pioneers, including Cisco, and later Dell, outsourced manufacturing to a network of factories, mostly in Asia. That so impressed Steve Jobs at Apple that in 1998 he hired Tim Cook, a supply-chain expert. Mr Cook created a global archipelago of contract manufacturers and suppliers, which today has hundreds of key sites around the world.

The four other big smartphone firms each add their own twist. Samsung makes more of its devices in-house, but has huge factories in Vietnam and sells semiconductors and displays to its rivals. Huawei, based in Shenzhen, prefers to make components internally. Xiaomi and OPPO, both Chinese, are even leaner than Apple, using outsourced production at home and abroad.

These intricate networks have a vast economic footprint, as a recent IMF study shows. At the peak in October 2017, smartphone components accounted for over 33% of exports from Taiwan, 17% of those from Malaysia and 16% from Singapore. Smartphones comprise 6% of Chinese exports. Memory chips flow from South Korea and Vietnam; system chips from Malaysia, Taiwan and elsewhere; and displays from Japan and South Korea. Rich-world firms, such as Qualcomm, sell licences to use their intellectual property (IP). The parts are then assembled, mainly by armies of Chinese workers. The machine cranks up ahead of the launch of each new model—Apple may reveal its latest on September 12th—and spews out millions of devices.

The first threat to this system is that the number of new smartphones sold fell by 0.3% last year as China reached saturation and Western users upgraded less often. Yet despite this, total revenues increased by 10% for all suppliers of hardware and services to smartphone firms. Firms that sell games and services are booming; the sales of developers through Apple』s App Store rose by over 30% last year, to $27bn. New phones are stuffed with pricier chips and displays. The total value of the parts inside the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9 is 28% and 13% more, respectively, than in their predecessor models, according to IHS Markit.

The system』s chief weakness is its long tail of puny firms. Many observers worry about labour conditions in the supply chain; the typical poorly paid assembly worker in China handles 1,700 phones a day. But life has been hard for some capitalists, too. One way to show this is to examine the finances of 42 big Apple suppliers. (These figures are estimates, using data from Bloomberg, IHS and Morgan Stanley; the 42 firms cover about three-quarters of Apple』s suppliers』 total gross profits and we weight each firm for the share of its business with Apple.)

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Apple and 13 of its chip suppliers earn over 90% of the total pool of profits from the Apple system. Meanwhile the tail of other firms doing more basic activities must pay for most workers, inventories and fixed assets (see chart). So they have in aggregate a weak return on equity, of 9%, and a net profit margin of just 2%. Their earnings have not risen for five years. They include assemblers such as Taiwan』s Hon Hai and niche component makers, some of which are visibly struggling. On August 22nd AAC Technologies, a specialist in making phones vibrate, said its second-quarter profits fell by 39% compared with the previous year.

The typical supplier is secretive, battle-hardened, controlled by its founder and accustomed to volatility. If you take a broader sample of 132 suppliers to Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi, typically a third of them are shrinking in any given year. Their tight finances leave them exposed to trade tensions, which are the industry』s second big problem. In April America imposed sanctions on ZTE, a Chinese electronics firm that makes some handsets (they were lifted in July). So far America and China have refrained from messing with any other firms. Yet if tensions escalate, they could be in the firing line.

Supplier beware

Apple, Samsung and most semiconductor makers could ride out such tensions, with their high margins and cash-laden balance-sheets. But the long chain of other suppliers could not, given their razor-thin margins, big working-capital balances and fixed costs. Tariffs could push them into the red. Of the 132 firms, 52% would be loss-making if costs rose by just 5%. And a ZTE-style cessation of trade would be disastrous. If revenues dried up and the 132 firms continued to pay their own suppliers, short-term debts and wages, 28% of them would run out of cash within 100 days.

Choking the smartphone complex would be madness: consumers would be upset, millions of jobs would be at risk in Asia, and stockmarkets in America and East Asia would suffer. But even if governments avoid a shock, over time they are likely to push for a greater share of the profits, jobs and IP. America wants more plants at home. China is suing several foreign memory-chip firms for price-fixing and wants to build an indigenous semiconductor capability. If you are running a big firm in the smartphone complex, you should be reimagining things in preparation for a less open world. In a decade, on its current trajectory, the industry will be smaller, with suppliers forced to consolidate and to automate production. It may also be organised in national silos, with production, IP, profits and jobs distributed more evenly around the world. Firms will need to adapt—or be swiped away.

熊彼特

iSupply

全球智能手機供應鏈是一大現代奇蹟，但它的自我重塑在所難免

要說全球化的功績，智能手機產業體系可謂一座罕有匹敵的豐碑。今年，幾十個國家的數百家企業的數百萬名工人將製造出15億台手機。當你點擊手機屏幕，你觸摸的這件東西就如同16世紀歐洲貴族眼中的爪哇香料一般神奇。從商業方面看，智能手機產業至關重要，不容有失。但這一全球化奇蹟正面臨雙重威脅：智能手機熱潮的消退和全球化黃金時代的結束。為評估這些風險，本專欄對智能手機供應鏈的財務實力做了「壓力測試」。總體而言，這條供應鏈目前的狀態良好，但其中大量弱小公司構成的「長尾」令人擔憂。

曾有幾十年的時間，大多數消費電子企業都選擇在本土生產設備。諾基亞在它大紅大紫的時代就是在芬蘭小鎮薩洛（Salo）大批量生產出自己的手機。到了上世紀90年代，思科以及稍後的戴爾等公司率先將製造流程外包給主要位於亞洲的工廠網路。蘋果公司的喬布斯深受啟發，遂在1998年聘請了供應鏈專家庫克。庫克在全球建立了星羅棋布的合同製造商及供應商網路，如今在世界各地擁有數百個重要工廠。

其他四家大型智能手機公司在此基礎上各有變化。三星如今主要在自己公司內部生產設備，但在越南擁有大型工廠，並向競爭對手銷售半導體和顯示屏。總部位於深圳的華為傾向在公司內部生產組件。同為中國品牌的小米和OPPO則比蘋果更精簡，採用外包形式在國內外生產產品。

正如國際貨幣基金組織最近一項研究顯示，這些錯綜複雜的網路產生了廣泛的經濟影響。在2017年10月的巔峰期，智能手機組件佔台灣出口的33%以上、馬來西亞的17%、新加坡的16%。智能手機佔到中國出口的6%。韓國和越南大量出口內存晶元；系統晶元主要來自馬來西亞、台灣等地；顯示屏來自日本和韓國。像高通（Qualcomm）這樣的富裕國家的公司會出售使用其知識產權的許可證。之後，再由主要由中國工人組成的製造大軍組裝產品。每款新機型推出前（蘋果預計會在9月12日發布新產品），這台「供應鏈機器」就會開動起來，源源不斷地輸出數百萬台設備。

這個系統面臨的第一個威脅是市場萎縮。隨著中國市場飽和，西方用戶升級換機的頻率降低，去年售出的新智能手機數量下降了0.3%。儘管如此，所有智能手機公司的硬體和服務供應商的總收入仍增長了10%。銷售遊戲和服務的公司正蓬勃發展——蘋果App Store的應用開發者的銷售額去年上升超過30%，達到270億美元。新款手機採用的晶元和顯示屏價格也愈加昂貴。據全球信息提供商IHS Markit的數據，iPhone X和三星Galaxy S9採用的部件總值分別比各自的上一代機型高出28%和13%。

這個系統的主要弱點是由弱小公司構成的「長尾」。許多觀察人士為供應鏈中工人的勞動條件感到擔憂——中國的低收入裝配工人通常每人每天要經手1700台手機。但一些資本家也度日艱難。從蘋果的42家大型供應商的財務狀況可見一斑。（這些數字是根據彭博、IHS和摩根士丹利的數據估算而來；這42家公司的總利潤約佔蘋果供應商總利潤的四分之三，我們按每家公司與蘋果業務的份額作加權。）

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蘋果公司及其13家晶元供應商拿走了蘋果體系中超過90%的總利潤。而負責完成較基本工作的其他「長尾」公司必須支付大部分工人的工資、存貨和固定資產（見圖表）。因此，它們作為一個總體的股本回報率較低，為9%，凈利潤率僅為2%。這些公司的營收已五年未見起色。這之中包括台灣的鴻海等組裝工廠以及一些小型組件製造商，其中部分公司顯然處境艱難。8月22日，主營手機震動部件的瑞聲科技表示，其第二季度利潤比去年同期下降了39%。

典型的供應商都低調隱秘，久經沙場，由創始人控制，見慣市場風浪。如果把樣本擴大至蘋果、三星和小米的132家供應商，那麼任何一年裡通常都有三分之一的供應商在萎縮。財務緊拙令這些公司容易受到貿易摩擦的衝擊，這是該行業的第二大問題。今年4月，美國對擁有手機生產業務的中國電子公司中興通訊實施制裁（已於7月解除）。目前為止，美國和中國都還保持克制，未對其他任何公司動手。然而，如果貿易戰升級，這些公司就可能遭到打擊。

供應商請小心

蘋果、三星和大多數半導體製造商可憑藉高利潤和資產負債表上充裕的現金捱過這種緊張局面。但長鏈上的其他供應商由於利潤微薄、營運資金餘額和固定成本高，情況不容樂觀。關稅可能令其陷入虧損。只要成本上漲5%，這132家公司中就有52%將出現虧損。中興式的貿易禁令將是災難性的。如果收入枯竭，而這132家公司繼續償付自己的供應商、短期債務和工資，其中28%將在100天內耗盡所有現金。

扼殺智能手機產業體系將是瘋狂之舉：消費者會失望，亞洲的數百萬個工作崗位將岌岌可危，美國和東亞的股票市場也將受挫。但即使兩國政府此次避免了這樣的衝擊，長期來看它們很可能還是要為本國爭取更大份額的利潤、就業崗位和知識產權。美國希望企業更多在美國設廠。中國正在狀告幾家外國內存晶元公司涉嫌價格壟斷，同時希望在本土發展半導體產能。如果你在智能手機產業體系中經營著一家大公司，那就得重做打算，準備適應一個不那麼開放的世界。按目前的發展趨勢，十年後，這個產業的規模將縮小，供應商被迫整合併實現生產自動化。它也可能要在各個國家的內部組織，令生產、知識產權、利潤和就業機會在世界各地更均勻分布。企業將需要調整適應，否則就會被淘汰出局。

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