亚马逊的语音商业帝国悄然成型
在推出智能语音助手Alexa之前，亚马逊(Amazon)刚刚经历了一次令人尴尬的失利。亚马逊希望用智能手机Fire做出一番成绩，但这一尝试彻底失败，迫使该公司在2014年末进行了一次1.7亿美元的减记。分析师称Fire是有史以来最糟糕的手机之一。
The end of the Fire phone seemed to dash Amazon’s hopes of developing its own mobile platform. At a time when Apple had the iPhone, and Alphabet had its ubiquitous Google search engine, Amazon was desperate to find ways to reach customers directly without going through a rival tech company.
Fire手机的终结似乎让亚马逊发展自己的移动平台的希望化为泡影。当时苹果(Apple)拥有iPhone，Alphabet拥有无处不在的谷歌(Google)搜索引擎，亚马逊急于找到不经由竞争科技公司、直接触及顾客的方法。
Although few expected it at the time, Alexa has given Amazon precisely the entrée it had been seeking with the Fire phone — just in a different format. Instead of asking users to interact with a screen, Alexa is entirely voice based.
尽管当时很少有人预见到，但Alexa给予亚马逊的正是其一直试图用Fire手机实现的入口，只不过形式不同。Alexa的模式并不是让用户与屏幕进行交互，而是完全基于语音。
The initial Alexa product, the Echo speaker, was launched two weeks after the Fire writedown and became the first voice-controlled speaker to have mass public appeal. In the two years since its release, Alexa has spread like wildfire, and the voice service is now integrated into dozens of home gadgets, including refrigerators and, soon, cars.
作为最初集成Alexa的产品，Echo扬声器是在Fire手机的那笔减记两周后发布的，成为第一款拥有广大号召力的语音控制扬声器。在发布后的两年中，Alexa势如燎原，这项语音服务现在已被集成到冰箱等数十种家用电器中，很快汽车也将集成这一服务。
Amazon hopes that Alexa Voice Services, the digital mind behind the assistant, will become ubiquitous wherever voice commands are used.
亚马逊希望Alexa语音助手背后的数字智能——Alexa语音服务(Alexa Voice Services)在任何使用语音指令的场合得到使用。
The company has succeeded in unlikely business areas before, most notably with Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing business. Launched 10 years ago, AWS exploited its first-mover advantage and is now the biggest cloud computing provider in the world.
亚马逊已在之前看起来不太可能的商业领域取得成功，最突出的是亚马逊的云计算服务亚马逊网络服务(AWS)。十年前推出的AWS利用先发优势，现在是世界最大的云计算服务提供商。
Replicating that success with Alexa will not be easy, but Amazon has already put big resources behind the effort. To encourage adoption, the company sells its Alexa devices at a loss — pricing them between 10 and 20 per cent less than the cost of the hardware, according to an estimate from Evercore. The company has never disclosed how many Alexa-enabled devices it has sold.
在Alexa身上复制这种成功并不容易，但亚马逊已对此投入大量资源。为了推广，该公司亏本出售Alexa设备——据Evercore的估算，其定价比硬件成本低10%到20%。亚马逊从未公开售出了多少内置Alexa服务的设备。
Amazon also gives Alexa Voice Services away for free, meaning a developer can integrate Alexa into any device with a speaker and microphone. And there is an Alexa Fund that gives grants to developers to work on new applications.
Amazon还免费提供Alexa语音服务，这意味着开发者可以将Alexa集成到任何有扬声器和麦克风的设备上。亚马逊还成立了Alexa基金，向那些开发新的Alexa应用的开发者提供补贴。
The company has also been pouring resources into Alexa. Evercore estimates that Amazon lost about $330m on Alexa in 2016, including net losses on the devices as well as personnel costs, and that this figure will nearly double to exceed $600m this year.
亚马逊一直在向Alexa投入大量资源。Evercore估计2016年亚马逊在Alexa上亏损3.3亿美元，包括销售设备方面的净损失和人员成本，今年这个数字将增长近一倍至逾6亿美元。
Amazon is currently advertising openings for more than 500 jobs in its Alexa team as it seeks to expand. (The company has also promised to add 100,000 new jobs, mostly warehouse positions, in the US by mid-2018.) The strategic imperative for Amazon is clear: Alexa is its chance to own the operating system in this new medium, voice.
亚马逊计划扩大Alexa团队，正在为该团队的500多个岗位空缺登招聘广告。(该公司还承诺在2018年年中之前在美国提供10万个新工作岗位，主要是仓储工作岗位。)对亚马逊而言，Alexa的战略重要性显而易见：Alexa是亚马逊在语音这个新媒介主导操作系统的机会。
“It’s kind of like trying to become the Google for voice or the Windows for voice,” said Mark Mahaney, analyst at RBC. “I think Amazon is just running away with this market.”
“这就像是试图成为语音方面的谷歌或者语音方面的Windows操作系统，”加拿大皇家银行资本市场(RBC Capital Markets)分析师马克•马哈尼(Mark Mahaney)说，“我们认为亚马逊是在拐跑这个市场。”
He points to two places where voice interactions are most convenient: the home and the car. In the home, Amazon can strengthen its ties to customers, and of course make it easier for them to shop on Amazon and listen to Amazon Music.
他指出两种最适用语音交互的环境：家居和汽车。在家中，亚马逊能够加强其与顾客的纽带，当然，同时还能让顾客更方便地在亚马逊上购物，听亚马逊音乐(Amazon Music)。
This presence in the home dovetails with Amazon’s recent effort to expand its grocery business, Amazon Fresh. “It is kind of Amazon’s Trojan horse into the refrigerator,” said Mr Mahaney.
Alexa进军家庭与亚马逊最近推广亚马逊生鲜(Amazon Fresh)的努力相吻合。“这就像是亚马逊在人们的冰箱里放入了特洛伊木马，”马哈尼说。
He estimates that as many as 10m Alexa devices were sold in the recent holiday quarter. These direct retail opportunities are only part of the picture, however. Owning the voice operating system puts Amazon in a powerful position, allowing it to act as the gatekeeper for third-party applications and customer data.
他估计最近的假日季卖出了多达1000万台Alexa设备。不过这些直接的零售机会仅是其版图的一部分。Alexa语音操作系统令亚马逊获得了强大地位，使它成为第三方应用程序和客户数据的“看门人”。
So far, Amazon has taken an open approach towards third-party apps, or “skills”, that integrate with Alexa. Spotify and Pandora are available through Alexa, even though they compete with Amazon’s music service. Customers can also use Alexa to order Domino’s Pizza — even though it competes with Amazon’s restaurant delivery service.
到目前为止，亚马逊对第三方应用(或“skills”)的集成还采取开放态度。Spotify和Pandora都能通过Alexa收听，虽然它们与亚马逊音乐服务是竞争关系。客户还可以使用Alexa下单达美乐披萨(Domino's Pizza)，虽然它也与亚马逊的送餐服务竞争。
This approach has been reassuring to companies that are planning to partner with Alexa. The carmaker Ford set itself a simple task when it came to picking a giant tech company with which to forge an alliance: find one that was unlikely to end up being a direct competitor.
Alexa的这种开放性态度让计划与之合作的企业感到放心。汽车制造商福特(Ford)在挑选要建立联盟的科技巨头时，给自己制定了一个简单的任务：找一家不大可能最后变成自己直接竞争对手的企业。
That was a large part of the thinking behind the carmaker’s announcement last week that it will use Alexa in its cars later this year. The arrangement is a breakthrough for Alexa, giving it a place in car dashboards. It also caps an early lead over Google and Microsoft in the race to bring voice-activated intelligent agents into devices of all types.
福特在近期宣布将于今年晚些时候将把Alexa用在其汽车里，上述考量在背后占了很大一部分。该协议是Alexa的一次突破，令其在汽车仪表盘上占据了一席之地，而且在将语音激活的智能代理接入各种设备的竞争中，相对谷歌和微软获得了初步领先。
Perhaps even more important is what the Ford alliance may say about future competition: the ecommerce company is finding an open door among hardware makers that see it as a neutral partner, at a time when Silicon Valley’s ambitions are casting a long shadow over many different industries.
也许更重要的是，与福特的联盟所预示的未来竞争：目前，硅谷的野心已给许多行业蒙上阴影，而亚马逊在众多硬件制造商中找到了一扇开启的门，这些硬件制造商将这家电商公司视作中立合作伙伴。
Others in the car industry feel like Ford. “It’s more difficult to work with someone when you don’t understand what their objectives are,” said Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan and Renault, in a reference to Apple and Alphabet.
汽车行业其他制造商与福特感受类似。日产(Nissan)与雷诺(Renault)的首席执行官卡洛斯•戈恩(Carlos Ghosn)提到苹果和Alphabet时表示：“如果你不了解对方的目标是什么，将更难与其合作。”
Amazon, on the other hand, has been clear about its intentions. “Some companies have already decided — these companies like Amazon and Uber — [and] you want to work with them, because they know where they’re going,” said Mr Ghosn. “And where they’re going is not a threat to you.”
而亚马逊已表明其意图。戈恩说：“有些公司已经做出决定——就像亚马逊和优步——你想与之合作，因为它们知道自己要去哪儿。而它们要实现的目标不会对你形成威胁。”
Amazon has also learnt the all-important art for a technology platform company of expanding its ecosystem by making Alexa easier for developers to incorporate in other products. “We’ve seen Alexa become a much more robust ecosystem than it was two years ago,” said John Rhee, North American general manager for UBTech, a maker of humanoid robots that last week announced an integration with Alexa.
亚马逊还学会了作为一个技术平台公司最重要的艺术，通过让Alexa更易于开发者集合到其他产品，扩大自己的生态系统。优必选(UBTech)北美总经理约翰•李(John Rhee)表示：“我们看到Alexa变成了一个比两年前强大得多的生态系统。”UBTech是一家人形机器人制造商，不久前宣布集成Alexa。
However, it is too early to tell whether Amazon’s early success with Alexa will give it a foot in the door to sell a wider set of AWS services.
但现在就判断亚马逊在Alexa上的先期成功，是否将为其出售更广泛的AWS服务打下基础，还为时过早。
Also, the loose alliances Amazon is striking with Alexa do not come with any guaranteed distribution period or give it exclusivity, leaving hardware makers free to switch to rival voice assistants.
此外，亚马逊为Alexa结成的松散联盟并没带来任何有保证的分销期，或专有权，让硬件制造商可以自由切换到竞争对手的语音助理。
Alexa’s success has also spurred a fresh urgency from companies such as Samsung that are trying to build their own equivalents.
Alexa的成功也激发了三星(Samsung)等公司尝试打造同类产品的热切心情。
Brendon Kim, who leads Samsung’s Next Ventures, a $150m start-up investment fund based in Silicon Valley, said Amazon “has done well to show people the potential of a new conversational voice interface”.
三星旗下1.5亿美元的硅谷创业投资基金Next Ventures的负责人Brendon Kim表示，亚马逊“非常好地向人们展示了新型对话语音界面的潜力。”
