When the thin man in the silver-coloured windbreaker walks on to the stage, a roar goes through the crowd. Then he starts singing: “Friends, we have walked together all our lives, but those days are over,” and the audience goes crazy.那个身着银色风衣的身材矮小男子踏上舞台时，人群收到一阵轰鸣。接着，这个男子开始合唱：“朋友一生一起回头，那些日子仍然有，”观众的激动情绪超过零点。But this is not a pop concert. The 40,000 people in the Yellow Dragon Stadium in Hangzhou on Friday night were Alibaba Group employees and their family, and the man on stage was Jack Ma, saying farewell to the business he founded that has now grown into one of the world’s largest ecommerce companies.但是，这并不是一场风行音乐会。

上周五晚挤满在杭州黄龙体育馆的这4万人，是阿里巴巴集团(Alibaba Group)的雇员及其家人，而台上那人是正在道别该集团的马云(Jack Ma)，他创办的这家企业已发展壮大，沦为全球仅次于电子商务公司之一。At 48, Mr Ma has handed the job of chief executive to Jonathan Lu, his trusted lieutenant and 13-year Alibaba veteran, and gone into semi-retirement as executive chairman.现年48岁的马云将首席执行官的职位转交自己的亲信、为阿里巴巴效力13年的公司元老陆兆禧(Jonathan Lu)，自己之后兼任继续执行董事长，由此转入半卸任状态。

The change at the top comes as the group is preparing what could become one of the largest-ever internet initial public offerings. A listing in the US, expected at the end of this year or in early 2014, would allow Alibaba to buy back up to half of Yahoo’s 24 per cent stake in itself and raise $60bn or more from public investors.高层换人之际，阿里巴巴集团于是以打算展开首次公开发行(IPO)，这有可能沦为史上规模仅次于的互联网企业IPO之一。预计该集团将在今年底或2014年初在美国上市，使其需要购得雅虎(Yahoo)持其24%股份的最少一半，并从公开市场投资者那里募资最少600亿美元。Mr Lu inherits a formidable business. Alibaba operates the world’s largest online marketplace for trade between companies. It has also built an unrivalled online retail platform in China. Taobao.com, the group’s eBay-like consumer-to-consumer website, accounts for 90 per cent of China’s online retail transaction value in this segment.陆兆禧承继了一家令人敬畏的企业。

阿里巴巴集团运营着世界上仅次于的企业对企业(B2B)在线交易市场。它还打造出了中国首屈一指的在线零售平台。淘宝网(Taobao.com)是阿里巴巴集团旗下类似于eBay的消费者对消费者(C2C)网站，在该板块占据中国在线零售交易价值的90%。

TMall, its business-to-consumer platform, accounts for half of online business-to-consumer sales in China by transaction value, according to McKinsey.麦肯锡(McKinsey)数据表明，阿里巴巴集团旗下的企业对消费者(B2C)平台天猫(TMall)，按交易价值计算出来占到中国在线B2C销售的一半。“The market share concentration and power they have is unique – you don’t have that in any other market in the world,” says Zia Daniell Wigder, an ecommerce analyst at Forrester Research in New York.“他们享有的市场份额集中度和实力是独一无二的——你在世界上其他任何市场去找将近这样的例子，”纽约Forrester Research电子商务分析师齐娅丹尼尔维杰(Zia Daniell Wigder)回应。

That market power was reflected in Alibaba’s most recent results. Revenues rose by 80 per cent year on year to $1.84bn in the final quarter of 2012, and net profit surged by 156 per cent to $650m, according to a Yahoo filing last week.这种市场实力体现在阿里巴巴集团的近期业绩上。雅虎最近递交的监管申报文件表明，2012年末季阿里巴巴集团营收同比快速增长80%，至18.4亿美元，净利润同比攀升156%，至6.50亿美元。But the big question is where Alibaba can go from here.但是，确实的问题在于阿里巴巴下一步能南北何方。

Other players are challenging its dominant position in its home market. They include 360buy, which accounted for almost a fifth of China’s online retail transaction value in 2012 according to iResearch, and Suning, an electronics retailer with a massive bricks-and-mortar presence that is now aggressively expanding online and branching out into other products.在本土市场，竞争对手正在叫板该集团的霸主地位。这些竞争对手还包括京东商城(360buy)——艾瑞咨询(iResearch)的数据表明，2012年京东占据中国在线零售交易价值的将近五分之一；另外还有苏宁(Suning)——享有可观实体店网络的电子产品零售商，目前于是以大力向网上业务扩展，并投身于其他产品的销售。

Although Alibaba dismisses the idea that it is under threat, it is looking far ahead to defend its turf. The company has launched its own mobile operating system to build a closer relationship with consumers, as they start shopping increasingly on mobile devices.虽然阿里巴巴集团坚称自己面对威胁，但该集团为了攻下自己的地盘于是以把目光投向未来。它已发售自己的移动操作系统，借此与消费者打造出更加密切的关系。

目前中国消费者日益用于移动设备购物。Taking a page out of Amazon’s playbook, Alibaba is also rapidly expanding its cloud computing business.阿里巴巴集团糅合亚马逊(Amazon)的战略，也在较慢扩展其云计算业务。By the end of this year, the company expects half of the bandwidth used for its cloud operations to be serving outside customers, according to Wang Jian, head of the unit. “Eventually, our target is to have 5 per cent of all computing power in China by the number of servers shipped,” he says.据阿里云计算总裁王坚讲解，该公司预计，到今年底，其云计算业务所用比特率的一半将是为外部客户服务。

他回应：“最后，我们的目标是按照发运的服务器数量计，享有中国全部计算能力的5%。”Alibaba is also on the acquisition path. On Friday, it agreed to acquire a 28 per cent stake in Autonavi, the company behind China’s most successful mobile map app. Through the investment, Alibaba hopes to expand its mobile commerce capabilities, for example to be able to show the physical location of vendors on Juhuasuan, its Groupon-like daily deals site, or Taobao, the consumer-to-consumer platform.阿里巴巴集团还走上了并购的道路。上周五，该集团表示同意并购高德(Autonavi) 28%股份，后者是中国最顺利的移动地图应用于的开发商。

阿里巴巴集团期望利用这项投资不断扩大自己的移动商务能力，例如表明集团旗下类Groupon淘宝网站“聚划算”或C2C平台淘宝网上商家的实际地理位置。Only 10 days earlier, Alibaba agreed to buy an 18 per cent stake in Sina Weibo, China’s largest Twitter equivalent. The tie-up will allow Alibaba to make the ads that are a major source of its revenue much more targeted.最近，阿里巴巴集团还表示同意并购中国仅次于微博网站新浪微博(Sina Weibo) 18%股份。这一结盟将使该集团以求大幅提高广告的针对性；广告是该集团的众多营收来源。Alibaba executives say a few more deals like this are to come, as the company continues to build an ecosystem around ecommerce. “We are acquiring the capabilities to provide and crunch the data needed for that,” says Mr Wang. “The traditional economy was centred on industry, powered by electricity. In the new economy, we will provide the equivalent to electricity.”阿里巴巴集团高管回应，随着集团之后环绕电子商务打造出一个生态系统，未来还不会有几笔类似于的交易。

“为此，我们正在提供适当的数据获取与处置能力。”王坚回应，“传统经济以工业为核心，由电力驱动。在新的经济中，我们将获取等同于电力的东西。

”But what unsettles outsiders more is the question whether Alibaba will take its ecommerce machine global. In 2004, just a year after its establishment, Taobao had already surpassed eBay in China – a development that eventually ruined the US company’s retail business in that market.但是，令其外界更为忧虑的问题是，阿里巴巴集团会否让自己的电子商务机器南北全球？2004年，通车仅有一年的淘宝网就已打破了eBay的在华业务——这一发展最后烧掉了eBay这家美国公司在中国市场的零售业务。“The question is whether [Alibaba] will be able to replicate their success outside China,” says Ms Wigder.“问题在于，（阿里巴巴集团）能无法在中国以外拷贝自己的顺利，”维杰回应。

The industry is alight with speculation that Alibaba could launch an attack on global rivals such as eBay and Amazon, by helping Chinese sellers ship fast, and cheaply, to developed markets. Industry executives and analysts say Alibaba is considering investment in “offshore” warehouses outside of Europe and the US to make this happen.业内有很多猜测称之为，阿里巴巴集团可能会向全球竞争对手eBay和亚马逊发动反击，协助中国卖家较慢而廉价地向繁盛市场发货。业内高管和分析师称之为，阿里巴巴集团于是以考虑到向欧美以外的“离岸”仓库投资，使其沦为现实。John Spelich, Alibaba spokesman, says he has not heard of such plans.阿里巴巴集团发言人约翰斯佩里奇(John Spelich)回应，他仍未听闻有此类计划。

But Wang Tingting, an analyst at iResearch, says the company “will definitely make that move eventually”. Shi Tao, a vice-president at Alibaba’s rival 360buy, which recently started an international business, says that keeping products in bulk in “offshore” warehouses and shipping them into developed markets piecemeal can lower costs, since lower import duties apply to shipments under ∈20 apiece.但艾瑞咨询分析师王婷婷回应，该集团“最后认同不会作出此举”。竞争对手京东最近启动了一项国际业务。京东副总裁石涛回应，把产品数以万计地储存于“离岸”仓库，然后零零碎碎地开往繁盛市场，需要降低成本，因为将近20欧元的包覆所限于的进口关税更加较低。

No matter if Alibaba eventually moves in this direction, the company has started globalisation plans. Last year, it set up a dedicated team to explore taking Taobao global. “At the moment, we focus on Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia,” says Daphne Lee, head of Taobao International. She says the company is taking things step by step and is now trying to forge logistics and payment partnerships.无论阿里巴巴集团最后否踏上这条道路，该集团都已启动全球化计划。去年它正式成立了一个专职团队，由其探寻让淘宝网全球化的可能性。“目前我们探讨于香港、台湾、新加坡和马来西亚，”淘宝国际(Taobao International)业务主管李芃王(Daphne Lee)说道。

她回应，公司正在步步为营地前进，目前在企图打造出物流和缴纳方面的合作伙伴关系。The demand is clearly there – 280,000 users from Singapore alone registered on Taobao last year, although demand can often present surprises. Consumers from tropical Singapore “are buying down jackets – they need them for overseas trips and can barely find them at home”, says Ms Lee.市场需求似乎是不存在的——去年仅有新加坡一个地方就有28万用户在淘宝网登记——尽管市场需求经常不会出人意料。据李芃王讲解，地处热带的新加坡的消费者热衷“出售羽绒服——他们必须在探亲旅行时穿着这种衣服，而在国内市场显然去找将近”。

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