To: Curtis E. Bemis who wrote (3878 ) 1/6/2000 12:11:00 PM From: DownSouth Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Curtis, I find the TMF article to be pretty much fluff. It is a must read, but it gives no new information. As a matter of fact, I recently read that The Gorilla Game author Geoffrey Moore believes that JDSU is a possible young gorilla in the making, which is a title currently bestowed upon Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Intel, Cisco, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), and SAP (NYSE: SAP). With $1 billion in sales, JDSU is such a large player in its industry that it is bigger by 50 percent than the rest of the independent component makers -- COMBINED! While JDSU does have a number of patents, it's even more important to note its engineering expertise. The company employs a high number of physicists/photonic engineers. As you can probably guess, these kinds of people don't grow on trees. It would be difficult for any potential competitor to put together a group of qualified people that are as strong as the group that has been assembled by JDSU. Additionally, there are very few suppliers for most of the equipment needed to manufacture pump laser chips. Therefore, any new competitors would have to design and build their own machines as well as the products. The end result is that JDSU's competitors face high barriers to entry.
