“To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a
misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” - Oscar Wilde, The
Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act I
Having lost Nortel,
Canada should be asking how it could ever have happened that the north star of
the internet boom could have fallen from grace so quickly and so decisively. It
is particularly puzzling as its major rivals have continued to thrive. Sure,
Cisco has never quite regained the lofty heights it reached during the boom,
but it is still a profitable and growing $100 billion company. Huawei, Nortel’s
Chinese rival has grown several fold since Nortel folded.
Research in Motion is
now teetering, having been outdone by Apple. When it first came out, RIM’s
executives considered the iPhone a niche toy that would never succeed in the
business markets that RIM considered its privileged turf, and which it so
thoroughly dominated. Not so smug now.
To lose one
national champion in the telecoms space may be regarded as a misfortune. To
lose two looks like carelessness.
1 comment:
Given that the company doesn't have debt, they fortunately can't be pushed into bankruptcy, like Nortel. But it is not impossible that they get bought out (given their valuation), renamed, and management decision making shifted outside of Waterloo. This may not result in net loss of jobs or investment, but there's a non-monetary loss of a National Champion, and the demonstration effect that it provides to entrepreneurs. There's a few outs left (namely BB10 in late 2012), and we can only hope they don't get forced to fold before they get to see the "river".
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