Recently there's been much debate about COMS and some comparison to CS, BAY, ASND, and others. Eric several posts back said it well that technology stocks don't behave like cyclicals, and it helps to understand the technology, market positions, growth potentials, etc.
In networking, I believe the following areas promise to be the next areas of hyper growth: 100Mbps switching to enterprise desktops, Gigabit speed routing in enterprise backbones, Virtual Private Network Services, and ATM WAN services. Additionally, next gen Internet backbones and XDSL services should follow these.
For a company to achieve success it needs to be one of two leaders in the hyper growth segments that it is competing in. What makes networking such a difficult field to invest in is that 1) many companies positions are tenuous and 2) the next hyper growth areas haven't taken off yet.
Any one of us can make money, long or short,if we correctly identify what they hyper growth areas will be and who the two top players in those segments will be.
One last note, technology alone will not make a leader. This game is to the point where marketing, size of sales and engineering teams, and brand name is equally if not more important.
It would be interesting to hear from others their thoughts on the next hyper growth segments and who should be the leaders. From what I see of COMS product pipeline they are well positioned in the areas outlined above. |
