Remember the early 90’s dialup internet? Back in those days, you were likely using a US Robotics modem. US Robotics was taken over by 3Com in 1997. Now, 12 years later, 3com itself is being bought up by Hewlett Packard (HP).
HP announced that they will pay $2.7 Billion in cash for 3com Corporation.
This will put HP in the Networking Hardware business. David Donatelli, H-P’s vice president in charge of the corporate-computer division, said 3Com has a better set of networking products for large corporate clients than H-P currently sells and a market share of more than 30% in the China networking market. With the deal, Mr. Donatelli said, “we get industry-leading products.”
“By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”
Read the press release from 3com here
Although this may be good for both companies involved, I find it hard to believe that this worries any of the other network solutions providers such as Bay Networks, Juniper, or especially the 800 lbs gorilla of the group Cisco–who I’m sure occupy the vast majority of the remaining 70% market share in China. HP has had networking equipment out for ages and never gained any traction with. Now they buy a dying company and think results will be different. 3com has not been able to find a way out of the downward spiral they found themselves in, when hubs and dial-up modems were marginalized. A change in ownership is not going to change that.