Mark Evans suggests that Nortel should buy Juniper and become an IP tour de force. “If Nortel had the financial resources, strategic courage and senior management focus, it should take a serious run at Juniper Networks Inc. With a market capitalization of US$12.5-billion, Juniper would be a huge bite for Nortel but it would shake up the telecom equipment sector and make Nortel a IP tour de force,” he says. Nortel’s CEO William Owens has been talking up industry consolidation, a bit prematurely perhaps. Nortel has was too many drains to clean. Nortel, I am sorry to say this, will and should not even bother with buying anyone. They sell to telecoms and they think like that. Despite their pretensions of becoming an IP powerhouse, well it ain’t gonna happen. If it did not happen with Bay Networks, well its not going to happen with Juniper as well. It is making decent progress in VoIP market, and that’s good news. Nortel is doing well selling wireless and high-end telecom gear and it should just stick to that.
Considering Nortels on-going problems, I think this might be more than the byte they can handle.
I Agree with Randy…not so long ago Nortel suggested they intended to pull out of making hardware. (http://firewall.typepad.com/firewall/2004/07/nortel_to_quit_.html)
And back in April they fired 3 of thier top execs (http://firewall.typepad.com/firewall/2004/04/nortel_fires_to.html)..So the take over of a 12.5 billion dollar company..I doubt it.