my guess that just about everyone on this thread believes lu will come back very stongly and will overtake nt. also, as a guess, they already had lucent when the news hit the fan and they are so badly wounded that they are not now ready to buy more for the moment. i'd guess they won't easily sell either, believing the worst is past.
so most of us are waiting to see some stabilizing of the price, and the more cautious (i'm one) waiting further to see some solid news indicating lucent is back on track - e.g.: winning more than one giant optics installation, or the resignation of mr mcginn and his replacement by someone outside the company who has a track record in achieving results in high tech.
i think lucent's pluses and minuses are summed up in one sentence by Jeong Kim in the forbes article you cite. Jeong was the ceo of one of lu's better acquisitions, he said, "As a technologist, this place is heaven, but we'll only dominate optical networking if we execute better and stop being our own worst enemy." so there you have it from a really talented pro who's on the inside: they DO HAVE the the powerful technological environment: the people, the tools, the patents ("this place is heaven") but they have lousy management ("execute better ... own worst enemy"). the executive decisions that made lucent fail to win virtually any of the major 10 Gbp/s optical network contracts had to have been made about 2 years ago: 1998. mr mcginn has been running lucent as an independent company since 1996 - so for 50% of its existence lucent has been on the wrong track in the most important optical market. to accomplish that with the world's top r&d labs takes astounding muddleheadedness. and all the while the news of the error is screaming at them day after day as the contacts are being won by others. so i, for one, will wait and see. |
