Here’s a quick statistic worth sharing. Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers spoke yesterday at the Credit Suisse Tech Conference and made the following point.
Cisco’s market capitalization has increased from $10B in January 1995 to $110B in November 2005 to $165B in November 2006; during that same period, the aggregate market capitalization of its 12 largest competitors has declined from $71B to $62B to $55B.
Wow. I’d like to get the detail behind this one.
Full Disclosure - I hold Cisco puts as a hedge against other positions. Lucky for me they are not positions in Cisco competitors…
It will be interesting to see if Cisco can be dominant in the server market via its Nuova buy now that the comm market is entirely theirs in the foreseeable future
During the majority of its acquisition stage Cisco acquired small and innovative players (enterprise market) while their competitors lagged behind. Later, when it became clear that Cisco’s strategy was winning their competitors tried to catch up, and quickly. There is an old football saying: never try to win it all on one play. Nortel (Bay Networks, Alteon, Qtera); Lucent (Ascend, need I say more?) and Alcatel (Lucent, need I say more?) went for the bomb on fist and long when they were behind while Cisco did that only when they were ahead, way ahead. Innovation is not exclusive to a specific lab and relying on ‘a century of innovation’ will only get you complacency. Cisco decided to create its own history while the others relied on it, which is why Cisco is now dancing in the end zone. Unfortunately, their competitors are still not getting it.