苹果CEO发言稿的弦外之音

    7.“而且，我们也开始投资扩大公司的直接企业级销售队伍。”什么意思？苹果居然开始大张旗鼓地关注“企业”了，也就是所谓的商业客户，亦即史蒂夫•乔布斯在世时从来不屑一顾的那类IT采购者？这条着实有点意思，但并不是什么新闻。多年来，苹果一直在不动声色地扩充企业级销售团队。但是，在论述苹果如何及为何进行投资时，着重强调这个话题，用意再明显不过了。

    最后，库克总结如下：

    简而言之，我们的发展机会远未到头。凭着上述所有创新和成功，无论在美国本土还是在海外市场，我们都获得了巨额的现金回报。一直以来，我们都在用一部分现金进行业务投资，扩大研发力量，完成收购，开设新的零售商店，对供应链投入战略性的预付资金、以及扩大自身基础设施。未来，这一切将有增无减。

    毫无疑问：未来15年内，苹果的发展速度不大可能与其过去15年内的速度相提并论。但是，读了上面这份清单中的内容，理解了报告的弦外之音，领会了公司首席执行官蒂姆•库克选择公布这些内容的原因，我们不得不同意：这家身价5,000亿美元的公司未来仍然存在巨大的发展空间。

    译者：大海

    7. "And we are investing in our direct enterprise sales force." What was that? Calling out for all to hear that Apple is paying attention to "the enterprise," also known as business customers, also known as the kind of IT buyers Steve Jobs despised? This part was truly interesting. It's not news, by the way. Apple has been quietly building its enterprise sales force for years now. But emphasizing it in the context of how and why Apple is investing for growth was extremely telling.

    And then Cook summed up:

    Simply stated, we don't see ceilings to our opportunities. All of this innovation and success have led to the generation of substantial amounts of cash, both domestically and abroad. We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business to increase research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments in capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out of our infrastructure, and you will see more of all of these in the future.

    There's no question about it: Apple will not be able to grow over the next 15 years as much as it has grown over the last 15 years. Yet reading this list -- and reading between the lines of why Tim Cook chose what he chose to list -- it's hard to challenge the argument that this half-a-trillion-dollar company has plenty of room left to run.