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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (35592)	10/17/1999 2:21:00 PM
From: The Phoenix	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 45548

Kyros, Thanks for the intelligent post.... let's discuss... there are a number of ways to figure out how a tech company is doing. IMHO, the most important way, is to look at the financial results of the company as well as its research and development spending. Agreed, however the financial results should be normalized. This market (technology) is growing at an unbelievable rate and I continue to look at COMS inability to grow revenues as a sign of difficulty. If you take away the growth in PALM which will be spun off it gets even worse. COMS was saved last quarter by cost cutting as we have discussed so the financial numbers do not appear to be any solace. No one can forcast the result of R&D spending - so our opinions will have to differ here until we see results. I believe that the market share numbers you site are accurate. However, I know that market share numbers are somewhat of a rear-view mirror. They are usually some months old, and may not reflect what will happen in the future. Moreover, there are many channels for selling networking products, and these market share numbers usually reflect only one of these channels. I agree the numbers I posted are somewhat rear-view - as are the financial reports. But if we're going to use facts to predict the future all we can use is the data that is available to us. The numbers reported by DelOro and other analysts include all channels and to be honest they get their data from the vendors themselves...regardless of channel. considerable anecdotal evidence of robust activity in new growing areas. Other than PALM and cable I don't see this..... Could you share your evidence of this growth? I agree with your last point that we may have to wait a couple of quarters to see if indeed COMS is turning around it's core networking businesses. We have to remember that we are all dwelling way to much on PALM. I know that this will create value for investors - but we are losing sight of the company that will be left. It continues to be my position (based on the facts that we have at our disposal) that COMS is not positioning for success - they continue to go after price sensitive consumer oriented products - a market that continues to be attacked by CE and high volume networking vendors. In my last post to Mang I pointed this out in part...one thing I forgot to mention to him was that not only has Cisco enabled Samsung and Sony and other CE manufactures in the DSL modem space but they also recently licensed their technology to INTC. It appears to me COMS is making the same mistakes all over again. You and Mehrdad argue otherwise but base your assumptions on a very narrow selection of the data that's available. In the end you may be right but .... again time will tell. As for investing - it's never too late. ;) The big boys never try to pick bottoms or tops they pick trends and get in early on trends. The one thing that we all agree on is that there is limited risk due to PALM in the security, but that does not assure success of the parent company...and R&D spending alone is, IMHO, a poor predictor of success. Kryos, thanks for the leveled and intelligent response. I wish we could all be as adult on this thread. OG