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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 100cfm who wrote (27908)	7/14/2000 11:01:33 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

100, I'm not trying to be obnoxious but I think you might be missing the point about applications software gorillas. I guess we could call the hardware side such as Q's proprietary as exclusive proprietary and some software proprietary IP as Fuzzy, as in we both do the same thing but we do it much better and cheaper. Siebel is the gorilla of their sector and their product definitely is not cheaper. Citrix is clearly the dominant player and one of their competitors is offering seats at 10% the cost of Citrix. But as you know, the cost of acquiring and implementing the software is one thing and the productivity and revenue gains offset those costs. As an exmple, an independent study of Siebel's customers shows that those customers estimate their pay-back on the investment to be less than one year. The reason I'm harping about the so-called definition of "proprietary," (honestly, my dictionary isn't a huge help about that) is because so many people reading the thread might get confused, especially those who are as technology-challenged as the carpetologists. As I see it, this discussion we're having really isn't about what "proprietary" means as much as it is about identifying the various degrees of strength in a gorilla. All enabling gorillas aren't equally strong, nor are all applications gorillas. For the reasons you mentioned, I believe Gemstar (when/if it becomes a gorilla) and Qualcomm represent the strongest kind of second-generation gorillas, (Cisco, Intel and Microsoft being first-generation gorillas.) Siebel isn't as strong but benefits from a rapidly growing market whose products are percieved as vastly important especially in the context of the new, Internet-based economy. With that perception, it's easy to appreciate why I don't have a problem with those three stocks occupying 75% of my portfolio. I'll try my best to let others have their own opinion about what "proprietary" really means and what its role is in our understanding of gorilla gaming. I hope I've done a decent job of explaining how I look at it. Thanks for putting up with me! --Mike Buckley