Cisco Systems will take advantage in the current slowdown in telecom-equipment spending by investing in emerging markets to expand its market share, CEO John Chambers told CNBC on June 22nd.

The information technology company’s business is growing in some emerging markets and Cisco is taking a longer-term approach than the next few quarters to see the results of its investment, Chambers said in an interview at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. 

Cisco invested in Russia over three years ago and its business in the country grew by 50 percent last year and it has increased “in the high teens” so far this year, according to Chambers.

 “You can actually pick up more market share gains when things are slowing or right before they’re picking up than you do in normal times, When we see things starting to slow in an area that’s actually when we may invest more aggressively,” Chambers said.  “We see the emerging economies not only as being able to grow … faster than our traditional business but we see them as an opportunity for us to begin to talk about how do you change the whole economy,” he added.

While developed countries’ governments did cut spending on IT around 15 months ago, continuing to reduce investment in the area is not a good strategy for these governments because the quality of their services such as healthcare, education, security of defense would drop, Chambers said.

Read the complete article & watch the interview at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/47916867

Comment:   

We were disappointed that Chambers did not name the technologies for the emerging markets that Cisco is investing in.  As Cisco has no presence in wireless infrastructure (other than mesh WiFi) or mobile computing, we wonder where the company will pick up market share.