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>>Monday September 14, 6:16 am Eastern Time
Cisco says economic conditions main worry
SINGAPORE, Sept 14 (Reuters) - U.S.-based data networking company Cisco Systems said on Monday its main concern was the state of economic conditions as its business was dependent on a country's capital spending.
''My major worry at this time is economic conditions,'' John Chambers, Cisco president and chief executive officer, told a news conference.
Chambers started a series of Asian visits to customers and government officials in Singapore.
He said Cisco, the world's largest network equipment vendor, had already predicted a slowdown of business in Asia some 18 months ago.
For the fiscal quarter ended July 25, 1998, Cisco had said sales contribution from Asia fell to seven percent from about 17 percent 15-18 months before.
Its worldwide sales in that quarter rose 35 percent to US$2.39 billion.
Chambers said whether the company would be able to maintain its growth rates depended again on the state of economies.
In countries with reasonably good economic growth, Cisco had seen its orders grow between 30 and 100 percent in the last 12 months, he said.
Chambers said the company was seeing negative growth in countries like Japan while Singapore managed to grow more than 50 percent last year.
Cisco also faces more and more competition from start-ups, and new players coming from the telecommunications industry, besides its traditional rivals in the networking industry.
''Our key competitors of the future, if they executive right, will be Lucent (NYSE:LU - news), Nortel (Toronto:NTL.TO - news), Alcatel and Siemens (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SIEG.F),'' Chambers said.
The convergence of data, voice and video technologies has blurred the lines between companies which offer products and services in these areas.
Chambers said Cisco had to become more global and move towards partnerships rather than just be a vendor.
He said the year 2000 issue could siphon off some spending as well.
When asked his view of Malaysia's recent currency controls, he said in tough economic times, there was room to try new approaches and he was going to listen and learn from businesses and government leaders there<< |
