Kyros, this is not complete and most of it is paraphrased, but I trust it will help a little. Good luck.
After talking with Shirly Stacy of IR at 3Com I came across with following:
MA: wrt the RBOC announcements, was the BA announcement one of the two so called coming anouncement?
SS: yes
MA: when will you be divulging the next RBOC announcement and is it of the same nature.
SS: very soon, hahahahaha, I cannot tell you at this moment...
(I got a feeling that the next announce will not concern DSL like the one with BA)
MA: wrt to the Palm, how do you intend to execute the spin-off?
SS: The valuations will be allotted according to the market values on the day of the IPO.
MA: I noticed the symbol PALM is currently not taken by any other company on Nasdaq, do you know what the symbol will be?
SS:(she giggled)
MA:(I got the feeling PALM will be the symbol)
MA: Was the company satisfied with the results from the Palm VII debut in NY.
SS: The company comfortably met expectations
MA: You've heard of Psion and the Symbian alliance..., is it true that you have become a licensee of their OS, known as EPOC and if this is true why?
SS: I have never heard of that and to the best of my knowledge that is incorrect..., but you should note that the PalmOS can work on top of other kernels that are used by the wireless phone companies.
MA: Are you aggressively licensing the Palm OS?
SS: Currently we have 6 licensees and intend to have 12 by the end of the year.
MA: with all these IPO's flooding the market with Broadband offerings, how do you plan to be competitive.
SS: like most nascent technologies initially you have hundreds players, but with time, like you did in analog modems, you will see most of the market share goes to the companies that can prevail. In the case of 3Com, we are very well positioned to head this pack, we have very good brand recognition and our production capacities are very efficient. We think as the sector matures we will begin to gather a much larger market share and in the coming months you will begin to see more contracts between 3Com and the telecommunication sector. Also do bear in mind our Broadband technologies are much better than most of the offerings by these smaller companies. We not only have the technology but we also have the proven capacity and infrastructure to manufacture efficiently. On top of that we have brand recognition and very good established marketing channels.
MA: with regard Wireless, R&D and your Patent portfolio were does the company stand? Is it true that the company has a R&D budget of $600,000,000?
SS: In R&D there are few companies around the globe that register more patents than 3Com. This is one area we are not given much credit for and that is understandable given that the market is looking for revenue growth..., you are roughly correct with regard to the R&D budget.
MA: can you give me any insight into the revenue stream expected from he Palm and esp. the Palm VII?
SS: we expect to do well in the sale of the Palm VII. The engineers at Palm are all very paranoid individuals and they are very well aware of the Palms position and the looming competition. They are aware of the historical analogies regarding Apple vs MSFT and they draw on many other analogies to keep themselves one step ahead of he competition. In the near future we don't see much competition against Palm VII.
MA: how do you expect this x-mas season to do wrt the Palm
SS: We expect to have a good x-mas |
