Your analysis is good, but we have the advantage of many decades to look at IBM, while the SUN story is far too new to speculate that they actually went "wrong" anywhere. Like it or not, enterprises have life cycles. Wish I had been around right after WWII to have invested in IBM, and I wish I had been smart enough, after that, to abandon it in the early 80's. It was a great, historic run for IBM in that time range, but that's OVER, and has been for almost 20 years now. Since then, IBM has been struggling, with mixed success, to build a new high-tech firm, and SUN is far, far ahead of them. IBM had the advantage of past profits, but the severe disadvantage of their obsolete, sterile corporate culture. So far it's been a wash for them-which is what usually happens with companies trying to survive as they slide down the right-side-curve of their life cycle.
Perhaps we could speculate that SUN went "wrong" by refusing to jump on the "Wintel" bandwagon. But I suggest that MSFT, with all its success, has simply made a faster run to its peak, and will decline from here. And faster, too, as IBM didn't get by all those years selling garbage to their customers, and becoming comfortable in the belief that the public will continue to buy that garbage.
SUN's rise to it's eventual peak is no more guaranteed than it is with any other company. But they continue to invest in that success, through relentless R & D. And I believe they are probably much better at that R & D than larger companies who spend more. I therefore continue to like SUN as a major player in the next Internet and technology boom, that is on the verge of happening, even as so many stock market losers (some of whom hang out on this thread) proclaim that the world has very obviously ended... |
