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

To: Dexter Lives On who wrote (50648)	3/8/2002 9:31:20 AM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

I agree with rob. Softie has $30 billion in cash and last year alone generated more than $10 billion in free cash flow net of stock option tax benefits. When you've got that kind of money -- margin for error as he puts it -- the ability to implement various initiatives shouldn't be confused with a lack of focus. If indeed their focus could be better (I don't have an opinion about that), the number of initiatives they have going on shouldn't be construed as a symptom of it. --Mike Buckley

To: Dexter Lives On who wrote (50648)	3/8/2002 9:14:15 PM
From: techreports	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

They have many margins for error, can many of their "competitors" claim the same? Besides, the broadband battle is just beginning... If you owned, for example, Borland, in the early 90's, you know what I'm talking about. It is an excellent company, but sometimes that's just not enough. There will be many Borlands in the next 5-10 years - it's a time for realism, not bravery, imho. microsoft's success in wireless is pitiful. they still have less than 20% in the PDA market. wireless carriers won't use msft software even at&t went with liberate even after a 5 billion dollar investment from msft. liberate still has not lost share to msft. whether xbox is a success is still up in the air. I do give microsoft credit. it's done better than I expected, but the game isn't over. msft is going to lose a lot from xbox over the next few years.. Same holds for wireless where standards are open, not proprietary open, and proprietary or proprietary open standards are very niche market's in wireless, and are self-defeating. I think CDMA2000 is a gorilla standard. WCDMA probably isn't but it may be semi-gorilla territory. For example, GSM is owned by certain companies. That may explain why the Chinese or Japanese have had a difficult time pentrate GSM or TDMA markets. The Chinese companies can't even dominate their own GSM markets?!!? Do you really think Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens, and others would create an open technology and then give it away to the Asians? I don't think so. WCDMA is a gorilla game for MOT, NOK, and a few others. That's my theory anyway.