马云展望未来30年：计算将引发多个领域的变革

在致股东信中，阿里巴巴集团董事局主席马云预测称，在未来30年，各行各业都将迎来一场急剧的技术变革。

“如同历史上每一次技术革命一样，前二十年技术革新，后三十年应用革命。”他写道。

这个三十年就在前方。马云和阿里巴巴首席执行官张勇的致股东信均表示，阿里巴巴将深耕价值数万亿美元的中国零售市场，并致力于推动传统零售商完成技术革新。

“今天我们看到的巨大机会不是在于如何把网上销售从现在的3万亿快速提升，而是帮助传统零售升级成为新零售的机会：如何利用互联网的思想和技术去全面改革和升级现有的约30万亿的社会零售商品总量，使得中国消费者日益升级的消费需求可以得到有效的满足。”张勇写道。

阿里巴巴将邀请零售商加入由网上销售平台、广告场地（如它的优酷土豆视频网站）和云计算服务构成的阿里生态系统。

马云表示，互联网对各行各业的影响标志着一个拐点，其重要性不亚于电的到来。“未来三十年，数据作为新能源，计算作为新技术，会先后引发新零售、新金融、新制造和新文化的变革。”他写道。

自2014年赴美上市以来，阿里巴巴一直在有力驳斥种种怀疑论调。在最新一个财季，其销售额猛增59%。该公司正在向东南亚地区扩张，运营中国主导性电子支付系统，斥资数十亿收购优酷等娱乐企业，并与传统零售商展开战略合作，其中包括百思买式的中国零售巨头苏宁集团。

马云介绍称，阿里巴巴的交易平台拥有超过4.3亿年度活跃买家。也就是说，几乎每3个中国人中就有一个人在该公司的交易平台上消费。“移动端对我们中国零售业务的收入贡献在上市前的财年是个位数，上个季度已经超过了75%。”马云写道。

“二十年后，我们希望能够服务全世界20亿消费者，赋能1000万家赢利的企业，创造一个亿的就业机会。”马云写道。

马云和张勇在各自的致股东信中还谈到其他话题，其中包括阿里巴巴集团不断拓展的云业务。上个季度，源自云计算业务的营收同比增长156%至1.87亿美元，但同时也出现2400万美元的亏损。

马云表示，“阿里云”承载着超过三分之一的中国网站。与亚马逊的云计算业务一样，阿里云现已成为阿里巴巴集团的增长枢纽。

“我们要做的也不仅是让商家与互联网连结，而是以云计算和大数据为基础让商家与未来的商业模式相连结。”他说。（财富中文网）

译者：Kevin

Alibaba Group executive chairman Jack Ma predicted three more decades of rapid technological change across industries in his latest letter to shareholders sent today.

“Throughout history, technological disruptions have followed similar trajectories: 20 years of technological disruption followed by 30 years of further rapid change as new technologies are applied throughout society,” he wrote.

Those three decades are what’s ahead. Both Ma’s and Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang’s shareholder letters said for Alibaba , change would involve transforming alongside traditional retailers in a multi-trillion-dollar market.

“From our perspective, the most important opportunity on the horizon is not growing online sales in isolation but rather helping traditional retailers upgrade into a brand new retail model,” Zhang wrote. “The excitement is in leveraging internet-based approaches and new technologies to transform the [$4.5 trillion] China retail market to meet the demands of the ongoing consumer upgrade.”

Alibaba’s pitch would be inviting retailers into its ecosystem of online selling platforms, advertising venues (like its Youku Tudou video site), and cloud computing offerings.

Ma said the Internet’s effect on industry marks an inflection point as important as the introduction of electricity. “Over the next 30 years, with computing power as the new `technology breakthrough’ and data as the new `natural resource,’ the landscape of retail, financial services, manufacturing and entertainment will be transformed.”

Alibaba has defied skeptics since its 2014 IPO. In the latest quarter, sales jumped 59%. The company is expanding into southeast Asia, runs the dominate electronic payment system in China, spent billions on entertainment business like Youku, and partnered with traditional retailers like the Best Buy-esque Chinese retailer Suning.

Alibaba counts 430 million annual buyers across its platforms, or one out of three Chinese. More than three quarters of revenue from its Chinese e-commerce sites came from mobile users; before the IPO, it was a single-digit percentage, according to Ma.

“In 20 years, we hope to serve 2 billion consumers around the world, empower 10 million profitable businesses and create 100 million jobs,”Ma wrote.

The other topic both Ma and Zhang included in their letters was Alibaba’s expanding cloud business. Last quarter Cloud computing revenue grew 156% to $187 million, but it also lost $24 million.

Ma said Alibaba Cloud hosts more than one third of China’s websites, and similar to Amazon’s cloud business, is a growth hub.

“Supported by the twin pillars of cloud computing and Big Data,” he said, “our goal is to empower merchants with the ability to transform and upgrade their businesses for the future.”