Eager PMC-Sierra Pushes Ahead
By Gale Morrison, Electronic News -- 5/15/2002 3:28:00 PM
e-insite.net
If there’s a company more eager than PMC-Sierra Inc. for the telecommunications downturn to end, you would be hard pressed to find it.
The publicly traded, Burnaby, B.C.-based company took its high flying stock price in the late 1990s and poured billions into acquisitions and other next-generation engineering investments. Two of its key customers, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks, kept the company as busy as a one-armed paper hanger. But then came 2001, and with PMC-Sierra’s whole play being communications, there was nowhere for it to hide.
But this spring communications IC companies, and PMC-Sierra in particular, are carefully stepping out of their bunkers. Companies hope they kept alive the right projects through the downturn, and that there are still networking gear makers, both wireline and wireless, ready to take up the latest technology. Unfortunately, the signs so far, such as more carrier credit rating downgrades and 3G wireless trial push-outs, haven’t been positive.
But history tells industry executives that the only way out is innovation and integration. PMC-Sierra’s Laurie Wallace, director of strategic marketing for PMC-Sierra’s Access Products division, last week discussed his group’s new waveform processors, out today, and said this is exactly the kind of technology and the way communications OEMs need to go.
There is a huge opportunity for PMC to be successful in this downturn,” Wallace said. Wallace came to PMC-Sierra through its acquisition of Datum Telegraphic, a wireless base station engineering specialist. “We’re very much ready to jump in.”
For more on this story, please see Monday's (5/20) issue of Electronic News. |
