All This Cash and They’re All Going Mobile

I mentioned in a blog last month that a lot of high tech companies are sitting on a hoard of cash. A recent article from CNNMoney.com caught my attention where they highlighted the top 8 high tech companies and their cash positions. It was interesting because all of them are in the mobile space.

Apple, Microsoft, Google and HP are either offering awesome hardware like Apple’s iPhone and HP with Palm or they have software that runs on cool devices (Microsoft with Windows 7, Google with Android). But look out for the other ones with cash:

Cisco- considered #1 in Unified Communications (UC). Cisco takes mobility seriously. UC offers increased productivity by unifying all your communications[1]. Cisco certainly has an elegant (albeit somewhat pricey) infrastructure for UC including redundancy and Quality of Service. They dominate both the enterprise IP PBX play offering cells as ‘extensions’ to their IP PBX as well as leading the global network and the infrastructure to handle mobile traffic. My take is that they will dominate the networks and all the equipment that makes it possible to call one device to the other. Money wise, we are talking huge infrastructure revenue because there are a lot of pipes and boxes that make up the world’s communications network. Cisco might not offer sexy devices like iPhone, but chances are your smartphone messages or voice will be riding on their network infrastructure.

Oracle- this company is interesting for a number of reasons (like profitability, growth, they even hired Hurd from HP!). They are big in mobile management with their Mobile Server by providing data synchronization, data subsetting, application provisioning, and device management. They also have mobile solutions including their CRM Mobile Sales Assistant to integrate with their enterprise CRM applications. But the big surprise here is that Oracle recently sued Google over its Android mobile operating system (Java based) and their rights to the language as part of their Sun acquisition earlier this year. They are definitely in the fight for mobile and with Mr. Hurd as co-President it will be interesting.

Intel- this kind of reminds me of the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. Chips are in the devices and not really seen, yet they are necessary for communications. Also interesting is the fact that the most popular mobile platforms all run on non-Intel chips — Apple, Google, Research in Motion and Symbian all work with the ARM architecture, not with Intel’s. But Intel has partnered with Nokia, who still controls around 40% of the global smart phone market, and Nokia has just launched new smart devices. There are forecasts of 10 million devices in the first year so it will be interesting how the transition works for them.

This leaves IBM- they’ve been pretty quiet on the mobility front. Their Professional Services Group have been doing mobile projects for quite a while in banking, insurance, really all the main markets that they dominate. Here’s a big BUT- enterprise mainframe computing is not where the world is headed in 2010 and beyond. IBM recently announced (rather low key) its’ enterprise mobile software strategy to industry analysts involving IBM services and software. Some new initiatives will involve middleware software used to support mobile users, and "using mobile devices to manage your business”. No big fanfare- pretty low key.

So getting back to the chart, there’s an interesting order in the cash positions and how big they are in the mobile market. Cash is king is very appropriate in this analysis.

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[1] UC is definitely an interesting business solution that I’ll blog in the not too distant future.