Comments on: Telsima, WiMAX Gear Maker Sold For Next-To-Nothing

By: Interview with Ajit Shelat, SVP Engineering at Nevis Networks | PuneTech

Interview with Ajit Shelat, SVP Engineering at Nevis Networks | PuneTech — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:54:43 +0000

[...] Telsima, WiMAX Gear Maker Sold For Next-To-Nothing (gigaom.com) [...]

By: WiMAX gear maker Telsima acquired by Harris Stratex Networks | Telepedia

WiMAX gear maker Telsima acquired by Harris Stratex Networks | Telepedia — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:54:56 +0000

[...] Noted blogger Om Malik wrote the following: [...]

By: PlanetCellPhone Blog » Blog Archive » Wednesday Links: LG X110, Telsima

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:38:44 +0000

[...] was just sold for a fraction of what you might think they are worth … read about it on Gigaom. Comment [...]

By: Habib Ullah Khan

Habib Ullah Khan — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:56:43 +0000

So I am going to keep it simple. I use Wimax and am in an emerging market economy. It works fine. And since I am in a new housing society built a little away form the city – It’s been two years but not even DSL as made it out here. But the Wimax is running and I actually work from home a lot because of it.

Yes I can get deeper into the economics of it. One of my partners has deployed the largest Wimax installations in the world and I know the technology well. But I thought I’d keep it simple.

It works fine. And sometimes when I go to my parents house I take my Wimax and my otspot with me.

Do that with fiber.

By: DailyWireless » Blog Archive » Wednesday Links:

DailyWireless » Blog Archive » Wednesday Links: — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:28:58 +0000

[...] Drop it like its hot? WiMAX gear maker Telsima was just sold for a fraction of what you might think they are worth … read about it on Gigaom. [...]

By: Petabro

Petabro — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:25:28 +0000

Alan – Completely Agree
Makes sense for Harris Stratex. Gets to sell more microwave radios.

By: Arnon Kohavi

Arnon Kohavi — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:23:14 +0000

I don’t think Harris is getting a good deal at all! Alvarion, the “market leader” is traded at $180M with $140M in cash – an enterprise value of $40M, and Redline is traded in Canada for less than a Molson bottle of beer. What about Aperto and Soma that raised in excess of $100M each? The only “successful” companies in these space were the ones who took advantage of a high stock market earlier to sell to a larger company (and Navini did not get such a good price).
WiMax will remain a niche product like fixed wireless before. Niche products that sell in Africa and other parts of the developing world will never receive high PE from investors, and eventually these products will only compete based on price. It is a crowded niche space – not a good place to be!
While I usually don’t give VCs too much credit for being intelligent, they were smart enough to get out of this market.

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:21:48 +0000

Sometimes I pitch my services to VC and institutional investors – not for full blown due diligence, but for technical product strategy review of potential portfolio companies. In order to get work, I will sometimes do a stand up ‘freebie’, to get my foot in the door.

This and few other Wimax wannabees were the subject of one such freebie that got me naught; however, on the initial call I said, “how can the market support so many small, fragmented players with such slight differentiation? That is the starting point of my technical due diligence: 1) Under capitalized start ups with insufficient product strategy to compete with incumbent giants, 2) even is the case of significant design wins, any of the sector entrants would require OEM licensing or partnerships to realize production, 3) a technology that is just one more common step in ever evolving commodity wireless transmission game.

All of the above means that fewer, larger and established companies have an edge. Is there room for the 20 – 70M startup? Maybe, but the design win has to be out of the park and I haven’t seen one in the WiMax sector, yet.