Who will it be? CSCO? LU? ALA? NOK? or NT? That is THE million dollar question that I have put my money on!
The Gorilla is dead --- what dominant specie will replace it?
JNPR's Scott Kriens said many of the same things at NextGen Networks a few months back. He also indicated there wouldn't be one giant (gorilla) but several. Right now NT dominates in the fiber optics terrestrial/metro market and ALA dominates in undersea fiber optics as well as access/DSL. I don't follow wireless, so I don't know who's taking share there. After today's merger with SDLI, JDSU dominates the fiber optics components market with no close second, and for a pure play, it's without peer.
Today's report by Cisco should not have come as a surprise. Not only did Chambers give fair warning, the industry has been sending out signals like there was no tomorrow. This was not the Titanic hitting the tip of an iceberg --- the iceberg's been sitting out of the water like someone pulled the plug on the whole damnocean. You said it perfectly --- money supply tightening and CLECs and ISPs falling over like flies, vendors like NT, JNPR, Unisphere Networks, ALA, taking business b/c of their strong carrier-class solutions and in most cases long histories with Tier I carriers, and a shift in the industry from enterprise-based networks to carrier-based.
To give Chambers credit, he's made huge efforts to break into Tier I markets but his competition was formidable and he's not had the success he would like.
I agree Cisco is no Lucent and with only one miss out of fourteen, the market should go easy on them tomorrow. Lucent, on the other hand, could retire the trophy on most number of missed earnings.
Pat |
