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ATM leader may need to test Gigabit Ethernet waters and put more emphasis on WAN products, observers say.
Despite the fact that ATM has taken its knocks in recent years, FORE Systems, Inc. has been able to string together solid financial numbers.
The ATM pioneer has maintained a year-over-year revenue growth rate of about 70% and has been the ATM LAN market share leader for the past three years. Not too shabby.
But can the $400 million company keep it up, even as it faces new competition from internetwork powerhouses such as 3Com Corp. and Cisco Systems, Inc.?
Wall Street does not seem to think so. The company's stock, which once traded as high as $40 a share, hit its low of $12 a share in March and has been hovering in the mid-to-upper teens for the past couple of months.
While customers spent twice as much on ATM gear in 1996 as they did in 1995, frame-based switches last year outsold...