Cisco Systems Inc executive vice-president John Chambers said the firm expects its earnings to grow at the industry rate of 30% to 50% a year – Cisco will have no trouble meeting that goal since its shipments in the past year alone exceeded all of its shipments since the company was founded; currently, it is shipping 10,000 units per month, ahead of its year ending July 31, when it shipped slightly over 100,000 units; Chambers said Cisco intends to be the major ATM player in most of the markets buying Asynchronous Transfer Mode switches – including the desktop markets and network markets; to date, Cisco has earned about 80% of business from large companies and governments, but it now plans to focus marketing on mid-sized companies connecting their employees desktop computers to enterprise-wide networks; Cisco market data indicates that it has 45% of the Fortune 500 market, or companies with over $500m in sales – and its recent survey of purchasing agents indicated that it will have 51% of that market, he said; it will grow market share among mid-sized and small firms, but by only a few percentage points, based on their current plans; Chambers said Cisco’s market is fragmenting into four segments – the access market, core backbone networks run by large telecommunications companies, the workgroup market for networks of workstations, and the mainframe market, and Cisco aims to split its revenues among the four.
