True, there is a lot of players, a bunch of small players. That's why I picked CLRN as the one with the greatest potential to suceed, IMHO. Some reasons as follows:
1)CLRN leads China in VOIP minutes, 37% compared to something like 13% for Cisco, and all others are below that. China is a huge opportunity, more so than the United States at the current time. Reason being is there is no network in place in most of China. voip is cheaper to deploy, cheaper rates, and allows easier management of telephony and data. China online has some good articles regarding the deployments.
2) CLRN leads the world in Voip minutes, was at I believe 25% for 1999, and at 31-32% for 2000. Clarent is beating Cisco at their own game. Red Herring had a good article about an internal email that said "Beat Clarent". It may or may not be true, but wouldnt' suprise me. Cisco has been spending all it's time and resources trying to keep afloat, Clarent is smaller, nimbler and has inroads that Cisco currently doesn't have.
3) Soft switches later this year with approx 2,000 ports, this will be huge when it's announced.
4) The market is huge over the next 3-5 years. there is many competitors, but the pie can be split among multiple participants and can still generate a large amount of sales, profits for all involved.
5) CLRN is trying to move away from hardware and more to software/support sales. Much higher gross margins.
What worries me: Burn rate of CLRN, still have 230-250mill in cash, no long term debt, but when are we going to be profitable? It's been pushed back to next year, could it be pushed back further?
Will price wars pretty much kill all profits in voip? I guess time will tell. I'm sure the same could have been said about Cisco 10-12 years ago.
I follow technology a lot, and believe Voice over IP is the next killer software/application/hardware in the future. I realized the internet was big in 1993 when I started college, but didn't realize the potential of some of the companies deploying it. I feel this is the next part of the puzzle, all IMHO...
I think Jacobs getting involved is good news for CLRN. I just don't want to see them bought out and ruin the stock/company like I have seen in the past.
I have followed voice over ip like no other technology/investment before, we'll see if I have to eat my words in the future, or whether things come about as I envision.
chbartel |
