re: 3Com: It's DoneMore succinctly and more bluntly, Mark Sue of RBC writes:
"From a failed US Robotics acquisition to a disastrous Palm spin out, over-paying for Tipping Point, with many changes in customer focus and strategies, 3Com may end up being the business school case study of what not to do. The back and forth bidding between Huawei for the JV was yet another chapter of poor decision making."
re: 3Com: It's DoneInteresting viewpoint if you subscribe to the global dominance of the US market. This may have been true ten years ago but not now, in reality it's Cisco that should look out as it's for sure the next aqusition target for Chinese money. And let's face they have a huge ammount of USD to spend these days.
re: 3Com: It's DoneI just don't so much analogy here. CISCO does a lot of good deals. They will do good deals with China. US wants to do more deals with CHina (... but I'm not sure why anymore). North American Engineers will loose their jobs. I hope more slowly than swiftly.
re: 3Com: It's DoneI will second that. While at it, let's not forget to fully leverage the NA telecom industry, such as Motorola, Nortel, Alcatel/Lucent. Although their combined market cap is barely a third of Cisco, Homeland Security can certainly use them to cover the flank positions on 3G/4G, IMS, Access, Optical, etc, while the Cisco shock and awe can go on an all-IP frontal attack. Huawei, ZTE, Datong, and the rest of 1.3B+ of Chinese won't have a chance.
Whoever claimed the war in Iraq is just a proxy war with Iran is clearly wrong. In reality, it is all about defeating China with the Cisco elites (e.g. Black Ops)
re: 3Com: It's DoneNow Huawei is the proud owner of a manure pit. Well, they certainly can't be worse for the local economy or SV business in general than the former management.
Maybe they can make it grow flowers by stealing a few employees from Cisco, create better code from scratch instead of stealing it. Good for SV engineers and economy to have two heavies in heated battle.
Bain tried to buy the part of H3C that 3Com bought. That 3Com money went to Huawei....
Huawei used some of that money to buy a %stake in the whole 3Com organisation after seeing several months of drop in H3C sales, effectively reducing the overall value of 3Com and getting better value for money.
Huawei basically got what they wanted and spent less money getting it. This is not a new thing. The Chinese have a clear history of driving a deal with creative approaches that some in the west might see as unethical. (not in this case)
The US market leaders should be careful - they may not have scale at the moment but they are clever deal makers and they have plenty of money.
What I see letting them down is the treatment of employees. In China you can spin people out of your company and you will have a queue of willing replacements. In Europe Huawei has suffered by making life tough for sales people to pick up commissions and has lost lots of people. They have made job offers that don't reflect the actual tasks and they are not willing to pay for the most talented people. The result is that the talent in Europe does not want to work there.
Short term deal making is their forte, their achilles heal is a lack of long term people development. Time will tell if they learn; if they do...... look out.
re: 3Com: It's DoneWhy would Huawei want to haev a base in SV where engineers already earn high salaries? I believe having MORE employers wanting me (and my compatriots) to work for them is a GREAT thing. More demand, less supply, means more wages increase, not the other way around.
I am a high paid capitalist, not some poor iconoclast working for peanuts.
"From a failed US Robotics acquisition to a disastrous Palm spin out, over-paying for Tipping Point, with many changes in customer focus and strategies, 3Com may end up being the business school case study of what not to do. The back and forth bidding between Huawei for the JV was yet another chapter of poor decision making."
Ouch. True, but, ouch.