Following on from a previous post I made, we are now a bit clearer on what AlcaLu’s strategy is within Mobile….
CEO Ben Verwaayen has announced that the equipment vendor is going to lay off 1000 managers, and reduce contractors by 5000 as it aims to reverse seven consecutive quarterly losses. The company is aiming to achieve breakeven during 2009, but did not forecast when it would achieve net profit.
Interestingly, AlcaLu put renewed weight behind Mobile, saying it would reinforce and invest in areas such as CDMA EV-DO, LTE, and WCDMA. What is going to happen with WiMAX and Mobile TV however is less clear.
The new strategy apparently looks heavily at accessing the web from any device. This means the provision of an “open environment”, and as a result the company will be focusing on service providers, enterprises, and ‘selected verticals’. There will also be 4 key areas of investment – IP, optical, mobile/fixed BBand, and applications enablement.
Well let’s hope it all turns out positive for AlcaLu – they have definitely seen better times, and without them playing in Mobile TV, that really only leaves a couple of players – of which Nokia has by far the most complete e2e solution.
If you want to read about the changes in more detail, you can go to Alcatel-Lucent’s site here.