Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Thomas Mercer-Hursh who wrote (30996)	9/3/2000 12:47:06 AM
From: the hube	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

>>Operating system and modem is a rather different combination than operating system and PC -- not only is the latter more complex by some orders of magnitude at any given point of time, but, more importantly, users interact with the PC operating system and their familiarity and comfort with it provide substantial inertia. Who would notice if the brand of modem OS changed?How much are the modem designs built with VxWorks in mind? Is WIND simply a preferred supplier de jour or do they actually have some lock on this business? Without the lock, you have no gorilla. You're asking the right questions. I wish I kneW the answers. As to complexity, I would say an optical switch is probably as complex as a PC. As to the lock, I think it has a lot to do with market share and dedicated resources. Imagine that you are a modem manufacturer (actually, I think this is probably not a great example, since we are assuming a company making a single product, but it will work). Lets say you have 10 engineers on your staff developing modems (note: I know nothing about whether this company should have one engineer or 100. 10 is just for this example). You have purchased a Tornado development seat for each of them, at a total cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. They know this system, because they have worked with it to develop the last two years worth of products your company has put out. You want to use Conexant's new chip for your next modem, so you order a sample that arrives with VxWorks already burned in for testing. Your engineers play around with it, and you decide to go with it, but you need to get it to market right away, because if your competition beats you to market, you will lose market share, and those stock options you got two years ago that can be exercised in three months may not be worth much, even though you already know what you will spend the proceeds on. ARE YOU GOING TO CHANGE THE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT?