Out of curiousity, I wonder why Cisco attract less hostile public comments compare to Microsoft. Cisco dominance in networking is comparable to Microsoft's dominance in software. I did a quick yahoo search and get the following data:
| DIRECT COMPETITOR COMPARISON | |
| CSCO | ALU | JNPR | NT | Industry | | Market Cap: | 156.78B | 16.04B | 13.99B | 3.56B | 379.45M | | Employees: | 61,535 | 76,410 | 6,111 | 32,550 | 419 | | Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): | 10.40% | 35.20% | 31.30% | 11.10% | 28.30% | | Revenue (ttm): | 38.61B | 28.05B | 3.03B | 11.22B | 174.38M | | Gross Margin (ttm): | 64.46% | 33.28% | 67.67% | 42.40% | 48.20% | | EBITDA (ttm): | 10.98B | 1.52B | 694.97M | 871.00M | 6.30M | | Oper Margins (ttm): | 24.07% | -2.78% | 16.25% | 4.81% | 0.36% | | Net Income (ttm): | 7.97B | -6.51B | 404.54M | -992.00M | 2.81M | | EPS (ttm): | 1.280 | -2.459 | 0.712 | -1.992 | 0.10 | | P/E (ttm): | 20.73 | N/A | 37.43 | N/A | 20.73 | | PEG (5 yr expected): | 1.24 | 2.36 | 1.11 | 2.09 | 1.24 | | P/S (ttm): | 4.21 | 0.61 | 4.65 | 0.34 | 1.29 |
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| ALU = Alcatel-Lucent |
| JNPR = Juniper Networks, Inc. |
| NT = Nortel Networks Corp. |
| Industry = Networking & Communication Devices |
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As oppose to Microsoft,
| DIRECT COMPETITOR COMPARISON | |
| MSFT | GOOG | IBM | ORCL | Industry | | Market Cap: | 256.02B | 178.09B | 171.60B | 115.70B | 236.31M | | Employees: | 79,000 | 19,156 | 386,558 | 74,674 | 185 | | Qtrly Rev Growth (yoy): | 0.40% | 41.50% | 11.20% | 21.20% | 17.00% | | Revenue (ttm): | 57.95B | 18.12B | 101.26B | 21.02B | 106.42M | | Gross Margin (ttm): | 79.35% | 59.76% | 42.49% | 77.17% | 71.24% | | EBITDA (ttm): | 23.10B | 6.51B | 20.91B | 8.66B | 12.75M | | Oper Margins (ttm): | 36.77% | 29.89% | 15.41% | 34.58% | 1.01% | | Net Income (ttm): | 16.42B | 4.51B | 10.89B | 5.09B | 422.82K | | EPS (ttm): | 1.721 | 14.463 | 7.666 | 0.973 | N/A | | P/E (ttm): | 15.97 | 39.20 | 16.30 | 23.08 | 22.06 | | PEG (5 yr expected): | 1.28 | 1 | 1.33 | 1.23 | 1.25 | | P/S (ttm): | 4.55 | 10.17 | 1.74 | 5.68 | 2.49 |
| GOOG = Google Inc. | | IBM = International Business Machines Corp. | | ORCL = Oracle Corp. | | Industry = Application Software | |
From my humble opinion, this can be an exhibits of the beauty of being low profile. It's not as if Cisco is a company which is seldom heard of, no, Cisco is a respectable company. But they don't publicly single-handed dictates the market. Sometimes, when you are eating the bigger share of pies, it's even more important for you to stay low and collaborate with the others. No doubt Microsoft will continue to drive a lot of competitors out of business, but that's also the price they need to pay for their big bully image.
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