Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) held on to its leadership position in the wireless LAN (WLAN) market which grew by 10% sequentially in third quarter of 2011 to $881 million, and is well on track to reach $3.2 billion in 2011, a 21% increase over 2010, according to a recent release by research firm Infonetics. The WLAN market is a high growth market with the rapid adoption of mobile devices fueling the demand. It has also proved to be among the few immune to economic concerns. Cisco competes with firms like Aruba, HP (NYSE:HPQ) , Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) and Motorola (NYSE:MSI) in the WLAN market.
We currently have a $21.21 Trefis price estimate for Cisco, with enterprise WLAN making (nearly 80% of total WLAN market) 2.5% of our valuation for the stock. Below we take a look at other highlights of the week for Cisco.
See our full analysis on Cisco
Smaller and Larger Cius Coming in 2012
On Monday, Cisco announced it will be releasing both smaller and larger versions of its existing Cius tablet in the new year. Cisco in the past year has focused on positioning Cius as a key component of its collaboration strategy, a $42 billion opportunity according to the company.
While the Cius adoption has been slow, primarily due to its $725 price point, Cisco is expecting the launch of AT&T carried model of the device this month will change that. Cisco aims to capture 10 percent of the projected growth in Android tablet devices or a figure of a million devices in a couple of years. It is also worth noting that earlier this week, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) pulled the plug on its Android-based Streak 7 tablet as it failed to lure customers away from Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad.
Cisco Introduces CloudVerse
In a separate release on Tuesday, Cisco introduced Cloudverse, a framework that combines the foundational elements needed to enable organizations to build, manage and connect public, private and hybrid clouds. Cisco CloudVerse combines these key cloud elements – Unified Data Center, Cloud Intelligent Network, and Cloud Applications and Services – enabling businesses to realize all of the benefits of clouds: improved agility, better economics, enhanced security and a dynamic, assured experience.
According to Cisco Cloud Index, over 50 percent of computing workloads in data centers will be cloud-based by 2014, and the global cloud traffic will grow over 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year. This offers a tremendous business potential and Cisco it seems is moving fast to make the most of it.
Understand How a Company’s Products Impact its Stock Price at Trefis