In this second interview series with Eric Benhamou, we discuss his involvement with Palm. If you haven’t already, do read the first interview series for context [here]. As you know, Palm is in the midst of a great deal of change at the moment. However, it is an important company that established the PDA category,
To conclude an extremely interesting interview, here is a final, reflective segment with Eric. We will continue the story of Palm separately, later in September, once Palm’s shareholder vote for the Elevation Partners deal is completed. SM: You have watched what happened since then. What lost 3Com the position you were in at the end
SM: Whom did you sell the high end product line to? EB: We sold it to Extreme. We put Extreme in business. It was a bad decision because the analysis was wrong. It was taken in an overheated period, by an over impatient board who were comparing ourselves with companies whose growth rate was inflated
With Palm successfully launched, and the merger with USR stabilized, Eric was now at the end of his tenure as CEO of 3Com. Here is details his final decisions, and reflects back on some mistakes. SM: In our next series, I would love to examine Palm. Finishing up with the 3Com story, however, the USR
SM: What you are proposing sounds very disruptive. AA: It is completely disruptive; we can displace, depending on the market, FPGAs, DSPs, processors, ASICS. Right now initial markets are really in networking, but the fundamental technology is revolutionary. It will be the way all multicore systems are built in the future.
Finally, poised for success, 3Com did spin off Palm as a separate company. SM: I think you find that a lot with folks who are entrepreneurial by nature – they like to be in charge of their creations. I know you ultimately did spin off Palm as a separate company, when did that happen? EB:
Here we discuss the current market environment, the competitive landscape with a focus on what current chips are being displaced by the multicore chips. SM: I read in the slides you sent me that you are expecting a TAM (Total Available Market) of $54 billion, is this based on the two markets we discussed –
3Com acquired US Robotics, and then USR started shrinking in the modem market, one of its primary franchises. In a royal nightmare that ensued, Eric lost the advantage that 3Com had built as part of its first turnaround. SM: Were there any positives which came out of this mess? EB: The only thing that came