Of course, maybe it's a different situation. For example, I know people that have recently switched out all their Cisco gear for Extreme. I think a better indicator would be to look at the earnings of the top five switch makers.
On the other hand, it's not 2001 anymore. Perhaps there are other reasons that router sales have stalled? People are putting it off until they have to do a move to IPv6?
Cisco sells way more than just routers these days, perhaps as part of their hedge strategy after 2001. Mostly through acquisitions maybe, but it's still impressive. Examples that come to mind include Linksys (home networking), Scientific Atlanta (cable TV & broadband gear), WebEx, and Tandberg (video conferencing).
Enterprise routers and switches are still Cisco's bread and butter; sales in software and consumer products can hardly be enough to compensate for a downward trend that may only exist because people aren't buying as many CRS boxes.
I worked at Cisco from 1999-2006 and 2001 was very scary. John seemed visibly shaken when he addressed the company in January 2001. The folks who didn't lose their jobs worried they would be next and many of us had most of our net worth tied up in CSCO (which declined precipitously). My team and I were laid off before the new matrix re-org, so I cannot say if it's been successful or not. But I still follow Cisco as John's public statements are a pretty good bellwether for the tech hardware industry.
Scenario 4: someone is eating Cisco's lunch. Anybody seen any evidence of this?
Perhaps it's from companies renting cloud computing resources instead of building and refreshing their datacenters?
Seriously. A coalmine canary isn't much use if you put a snake in the cage with it.
Huawei ?
We might not see a lot of economic growth next year? Stop the presses!
That's not what he said. He was saying that we may be looking at a double-dip recession in an economic climate where that could spell catastrophe.