3Com downsizing to 2Com
Posted by Matthew on Sunday May 30, 2004 @08:54PM
from the into-the-ether dept.
matthew writes: 3Com corporation, the company founded by Ethernet inventor Burt Metcalf, has announced a round of layoffs aimed at reducing the excess workforce caused by its continued sucking badly in the marketplace.
Mr. Metcalf explains: “We’ve been undercut in the low-end switch market by the Linksys and Netgears of the world, and overcut in the high-end switch market by HP, Cisco, and other companies that know a lot more about packet based networks than we do. We figured the downturn was killing everyone, but as it turns out, it’s only killing us.”
“We were going to try to do something with VOIP, but that turned out to be hard as well. To remain competitive, we’re going to slash our staff, operating expenses, and name by 33%. 2Com will be a lot nimbler in the low end market, and while we don’t expect to be able to beat Linksys, D-Link, or Netgear, we do expect to loose more slowly than we have been.”
3Com’s latest high profile emarassment was the failure of its co-marketing agreement with Ben Affleck’s production company to brand its high-speed Ethernet offerings as “Giglibit Ethernet” when the tie-in movie franchise failed to attract a significant viewership.