No, Wall Street knows what we're doing. It's just that it has been slower closing big accounts, reported a disappointing quarter, and that is why the stock has been pummelled.
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Yes, it is a difficult sell. Have any better ideas?
The stock has been pummelled because the outlook for 1998 looks dim, not just because last quarter results.
Better ideas? Give the browser away for free, and concentrate on marketshare solely. fight tooth and nail. make profitability goal #1. Fewer and fewer IS managers are going to buy from netscape if it looks like the ship is sinking (cf Novell, Apple). Stop worrying about far off goals like international clients, the 1001 flavors of Unix, a java client, etc (why the hell bother if 90% of the market is windows?). Build an extremely lightweight, windows browser that can be embedded in anyones application. You want to make OEMs, ISVs, VB-programmers at IS shops, third world programmers, ALL ship and use netscape.
netscape is dead if microsoft wins the browser wars this year -- everyone else is going to eat netscape's enterprise business for lunch. commerce? IBM's e-commerce apps or Microsofts Merchant Server or others have a much better chance of being deployed.
I realize you work in the commerce group at netscape, and you don't want to hear that, but do you really think biz's are going to commit to netscape for extranet? its not like search engines or databases, where Inktomi, Verity, or Oracle have built up huge technological leads over others. Netscape has nothing except their huge browser userbase, which is slowly shrinking...
mind you, i think netscape is neat, i've owned the stock for a while, but the terrible missteps, awful marketing/posturing, and technical snobbery ("who needs windows?") is killing it. |
