3Com's woes
from the eggs-in-one-basket dept
The Economist has a good summary of 3Com’s situation. Investors are concerned about where the company is going. It seems like they are putting all their eggs on the Palm basket. The Palm Pilot is probably one of the most successful products they’ve ever had. But betting the company on it seems pretty scary to me. The Palm is going to come under a lot of heat by the upcoming slew of smart phones from the likes of Nokia, Neopoint and others.
Comments on “3Com's woes”
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment.
Firstly, they don’t seem to be betting the company on the PalmPilot, since it doesn’t even make up the majority of their income.
Even if they were, the Palm is a pretty good bet. They’re in a great position to release a cheap Palm and sell millions of them. And although pundits keep saying “Any day now, people will start buying Windows CE” it just isn’t happening. If you ask me, they’ve been making the right moves by fixing just about all of the shortcomings of the original before jumping off the deep end with big new features that might push them outside of the “envelope” of cost, size, and battery life that has worked so well for them so far.
That being said, though, I’m looking forward to seeing 3Com (or other companies licencing the Palm OS) putting out something a little more radical. Diversity is good, as long as you’ve got your cash cow to fall back on if the new product tanks.
Jon