Lex专栏 苹果为何有选择地披露信息

Some stick-in-the-muds complain that Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook may have violated US regulations on fair disclosure by giving a sales update to Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC television’s Mad Money.

一些墨守成规者提出，苹果(Apple)首席执行官蒂姆錠克(Tim Cook)把一个最新销售情况透露给了CNBC电视台Mad Money节目的主持人吉姆克莱默(Jim Cramer)，或许违反了美国关于公平披露的规定。

“Booyah!” to them. Mr Cook’s revelation that Chinese sales growth was “strong” throughout July and August was a welcome palliative to the market mayhem of recent sessions.

他们说的太好了。库克透露，7月至8月期间，苹果在中国销量增长“强劲”。在最近几个交易日的市场动荡中，这是一副受欢迎的镇痛剂。

Concerns over the propriety are overdone. There is no suggestion that Mr Cook, unlike one recent New York case, writes market-moving information on paper napkins and has recipients eat them after reading; he chose a well-known TV host to circulate the information broadly.

墨守成规者对库克此举是否妥当的担忧有些过头了。与最近发生在纽约的另一起事件不同，库克并没有把影响市场走势的信息写在餐巾纸上，让收到信息的人阅后即食。他选择了一位知名电视主持人来广为传播信息。

In a market of fear, where worries over China are dominant — in spite of notoriously unreliable official data — any real data point serves a broader purpose. In his missive, Mr Cook also revealed that “growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last two weeks”.

在一个对中国的担忧压倒一切的恐慌市场中，任何真实的数据点都会产生更广泛的作用——尽管中国官方数据出了名的不可靠。库克还在其邮件中透露：“过去几周，iPhone激活量增长实际上加快了。过去两周App Store在中国取得了今年以来的最佳表现。”

Of course, Mr Cook was not being altruistic. Apple’s shares had plunged to $92, back to the level last hit in June 2014 and previously reached in August 2012. After his intervention, Apple pared its losses.

当然，库克并非没有私心。苹果股价此前跌到了每股92美元，回到了2014年6月曾触及的水平、也是2012年8月就已达到的水平。在库克干预后，苹果的股价收复了一些失地。

Yet Apple shares are weak. Analysts’ price targets of about $150 a share — or a reasonable 15 times forward earnings — are almost 50 per cent above today’s level. Investors are reluctant to buy shares in the world’s most valuable company, whose recent success is based on one spectacular product — the iPhone.

不过，苹果股价依然偏低。分析师们给出的目标价格是每股150美元左右——相当于15倍的预期市盈率——几乎比苹果现在股价高50%。投资者不愿购买这家全世界最具价值公司的股票，该公司最近的成功有赖于一个旷世之作——iPhone。

Meanwhile, Apple refuses to say how many of its latest category, the Apple Watch, are being sold.

与此同时，苹果拒绝透露其最新产品类别Apple Watch的销量。

If things really are rosy in Cupertino in spite of global economic uncertainty, Apple might consider making more disclosure a matter of course, not an opportunistic — though perfectly reasonable — move at times of strife.

在全球经济存在不确定性的情况下，如果库比蒂诺（Cupertino，苹果总部所在地）真的一切情况良好，苹果或许会把披露更多信息视作理所当然的事，而不是在纷扰时期的一种投机举动——尽管此举非常合理。