中國的小米也正在改變美國

Xiaomi is the Most important phone manufacturer you've never heard the rich world, dominated by Apple and Samsung and where even fading brands such as Nokia and Blackberry remain familiar, Xiaomi (pronounced like the "show-" in shower, plus "me") is still largely unknown.

小米是你從沒聽說過的最重要的手機生產商。在這個紛繁的手機世界，蘋果和三星處於主導地位，一些已經淡出市場的品牌例如諾基亞和黑莓還依舊爲大家熟知。而小米（發音聽起來像“shower”一次中的“show-”再加上一個“me”）仍然沒有什麼知名度。

Yet this firm, only 5 years old, has already become a formidable supplier of smartphones in its home market of China (the world's largest), and has begun a remarkably successful campaign of international expansion.

這個公司建立至今只有短短五年，卻已經在中國的國內市場（世界最大的市場）上成爲了實力最輕的智能手機供應商，並且開始引領一場非常成功的國際擴張運動。

As the firm gets ready to announce its newest model, the Mi5, next week, it is worth tuning in, because more than any company other than Apple, Xiaomi will show us where smartphones -- which is to say the mobile, networked computers we all have in our pockets -- are going worldwide.

小米公司已經準備好下週要公開他最新的設計模型Mi5，這款手機非常值得入手，因爲小米已經超越了除蘋果以外的任何公司，將要向我們展示智能手機的國際化，而智能手機如今已經可以說是人們都有的放在衣服口袋裏的移動聯網電腦。

China and the United States are the two most important economic powers in the world, and that goes double for technology.

中國和美國是世界上最重要的兩個經濟體，而兩國在科技上的重要性則是兩倍於經濟的。

For three decades, that relationship could be summed up as "invented here, produced there." (The iPhone box may say "Designed in California," but it is made in Shenzhen, China.) Xiaomi is one indicator among many that that relationship is over. Its phones are well-designed and cheap, and, more importantly, the firm has been engineered to rely on the Internet, allowing it to build one of the leanest manufacturing and sales operations the world has ever seen.

三十年來，手機生產中的關係可以被總結爲“這兒發明，那兒生產”。（蘋果手機可以說是“在加利福尼亞設計的”但是它確實在中國深圳生產的。）小米的發展則是衆多信號中的一個，預示着這種關係的結束。小米的手機物美價廉，而且更重要的是，小米公司旨在依靠互聯網，這讓它可以建立起最可靠的生產和銷售體制讓世界都看得見。

In a half decade, Xiaomi has gone from a startup focused on making a new mobile phone interface to beating Samsung as the No. 1 phone vendor in the largest market in the world last year.

在五年的時間裏，小米從一個最初只專注於設計出一種新的手機界面到去年打敗了三星成爲全球最大市場的手機供應商。

Xiaomi's products are so popular in China that it has become the third largest ecommerce firm there, just selling its own products. As 2014 closed, the company was valued at $45 billion, an increase in value of something like 18,000% since its first round of fund-raising. It is, by several metrics, the most valuable startup ever.

小米的產品在中國風靡到它在中國已經成爲了第三大的電子商務公司，只是通過銷售自己生產的商品。2014年尾，小米公司估值已達到450億美元，這個數字相較於它剛剛開始籌資的時候基本上是增加了18000%。從好幾個指標來看，小米已經是目前最有價值的新興公司。。

Xiaomi is widely referred to as the "Chinese Apple," a phrase that carries both a sense of awe at its design prowess and derision at its habits as a design copycat. Both reactions are warranted -- some of their phones look like little else on the market (the Mi3), while others are almost-copies of iPhones (the Mi4).

很多人認爲小米就是“中國的蘋果”，這個名頭既帶着對小米高超設計的一絲驚異，也有一種覺得小米習慣性山寨別人設計的嘲弄。這兩種反應都是有依可循的——小米有的手機確實很少有看起來不一樣的（Mi3）,別的都基本是高度模仿蘋果手機（Mi4）。

The firm was founded in Beijing in 2010 by Lei Jun, a computer scientist and charismatic serial entrepreneur now in his mid-40s, who is predictably, often compared to Steve Jobs, both for his energy and brilliance, and for his Jobsian taste in clothes and product launches.

這個公司是雷軍2010年在北京建立的。雷軍是個電腦科學家，現在又是一個45歲左右的有能力的企業家。他總是無可避免地被拿來與喬布斯進行比較，既是因爲他的精力和聰慧，也是因爲他喬布斯式的衣着品味和產品推出。

Xiaomi's importance, though, is about more than just its growth. It's about how it grew. The company was designed, from the beginning, to assume that both social media and ecommerce were normal. The rapid and enormous success came about largely because these tools allowed the firm to do everything backward.

雖然小米如今舉足輕重的地位不只是和他的發展有關，也和如何發展有關。從一開始，這個公司就是在社交網絡和電子商務都成爲常態的假設下進行設計的。這種快速且巨大的成功還要歸功於這些網絡工具的普及，這讓小米公司能站穩腳跟盡情伸展拳腳。

Xiaomi's coming expansion will be its real legacy. Mobile phones are the most broadly desired category of complex goods in the world, beating out their only rivals -- cars and televisions -- by a mile. The mobile phone is also the near-universal source of connectivity for most of the world's population, increasingly the gateway to every form of communications other than face to face, to every form of content other than karaoke, and to every form of commerce other than haggling.

小米即將實現的擴張將會成爲它真正的財富。手機是全世界需求量最大的一類複雜產品，甩開競爭對手汽車和電視好幾條街。對於大多數世界人口來說，手機更是覆蓋性佔領了所有和外界交流的渠道。逐漸覆蓋了除面對面以外所有交流方式，除了卡拉OK以外所有交流內容，除了講價以外所有買賣形式。

Though Apple invented the iPhone, and Samsung spread smartphones, it's Xiaomi that showed the world how to create a defensible market between luxurious and crappy, and to scale up to meet the rising demand of the rapidly expanding middle class in Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, India, cumulatively the world's biggest market by far.

雖然蘋果發明了iPhone，三星推廣了智能手機，但卻是小米告訴了全世界如何創造一種介於奢侈品和地攤貨之間的堅韌的市場和如何加大規模來滿足尼日利亞、印度尼西亞、巴西、墨西哥和印度的中產階級不斷增加的需求，而這個市場正在不斷擴大，不久就會逐漸成爲世界上最大的市場。

There are opportunities for the United States here since good, cheap products benefit U.S. consumers, too. There is also competitive risk, as always. But the biggest threat Xiaomi poses is for companies that don't take it seriously.

現在小米抓住了一個機會，因爲物美價廉的產品也能造福美國的消費者。競爭風險一如往常，但是越是不把小米當一回事的公司越是面臨來自小米的巨大威脅。

Xiaomi marks the end of China as a pure importer of products designed elsewhere. It was one of the first companies to adopt the new methods that are making China a center of innovation in design, electronic commerce and services. Xiaomi introduces a new risk in that relationship -- not a risk that Chinese firms will copy too much from the United States, but that the American firms will copy too little from China.

小米的發展標誌着中國不再單純是外國設計的產品的進口國了。它是第一批採用新方法讓中國成爲設計、電子上午和服務行業的創新中心的公司之一。小米給中美公司之間的關係中帶來了新的風險——這種風險並不是在於中國公司會發現自己在大肆抄襲美國公司，而是美國公司將會發現他們從中國公司借鑑的太少了。