>>I would think the margins look only a little better than OEM deals, not like cushy V90 margins.<<
Last I heard, from CFO talk with DLJ, is that margins might
be tighter than expected due to selling v90 modems through
OEM contracts. This is OK with me, just get the doggone
modems on the street so people see that they're OK. Then
they can leverage a higher price.
>>cable modems sell in bulk
Let, the cable company buys a boatload of cable modems and rents/sells them to the customer. That has been the pattern in the past.<<
The arrangement made with TCI.COM (I think) cable company, was
that cable modems will be sold through distributor, chosen
by TCI.COM, who sells 3Com cable modems. So, the user has
to buy it (from one of the TCI.COM specified distributors)
themselves (somebody I think has to come in and
hook it up - distributor). I remember that they did not
necessarily want to rent them out to the user. I took
this to be sort of a vague contract where their trying to
get cable modems selling, but it's not a sure thing.
From numbers I've seen, cable modem sales are low compared
to xDSL and 56K.
My opinion is that cable modem will be a harder sell, but
I haven't developed a full enough opinion on it. The important
thing is that if Cable Modems or xDSL get popular, 3COM is
a top-line manufacturer of these products. So, it wins
no matter what direction technology goes.
joe |
