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

To: Starduster who wrote (30838)	5/12/1999 12:55:00 PM
From: Doughboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

I've seen this posted on several other threads, but not here. It sounds like Eric is seeing the wisdom of selling off some pieces. It's also a tacit admission that buying US Robotics was a disastrous strategic decision. What's unclear is what Eric believes are mature, and what he considers emerging markets. I'm guessing, but I believe that Eric's conviction is that NICs are an important growing segment, despite all the data to the contrary. He probably believes analog modems are mature/dying. But what can he get any value for? No one is interested in paying money for the analog modem business. IMO, what Eric is talking about here is just letting the mature businesses die on the vine. That means we get nothing for them, and we lose all the money that was invested in them. Doughboy. Benhamou said 3Com currently has too much revenue coming from mature businesses. The firm derives 45 percent of its sales from older niches, like networking cards, and another 45 percent from existing growth businesses, like network switching. Yet only 10 percent of the company's revenue comes from emerging opportunities, the chief executive said. Looking ahead, Benhamou said he wanted 3Com's so-called mature products to account for only 25 percent of revenues. At stake here is the future of 3Com, which was once thought to be a toe-to-toe competitor to industry titans like Cisco Systems, the Bay Networks arm of Nortel Networks, and Cabletron Systems. As Cisco got bigger and Bay got bought, 3Com just tread water, seemingly unsure of which direction to go. While 3Com's rivals jump into the telecommunications equipment fray, the company is focusing on the consumer market as it attempts to shed its mature businesses in favor of emerging opportunities.