Q&A with Scott Wickware, VP of Marketing and Strategy, Nortel Carrier Networks
Scott Wickware, VP of Marketing and Strategy for Nortel’s Carrier Networks businessThis week is CTIA Wireless 2008, one of the industry’s biggest wireless events of the year. Nortel will be participating of course - with a booth, a good amount of news, and various session speakers.
One of those Nortel speakers will be Scott Wickware, VP of Marketing and Strategy for Nortel’s Carrier Networks business. A 16-year veteran of Nortel, Scott is responsible for charting the overall business and go-to-market strategy for Nortel’s largest business, with responsibilities for all aspects of commercial, product and strategic marketing. He also sits on the Board of Directors of both CTIA and the Wireless Foundation.
In advance of CTIA, I asked Scott a few questions on Nortel’s wireless strategy, the evolution of our portfolio, and his thoughts on the direction the wireless industry is going:
The industry increasingly sees CDMA as a declining market. Considering Nortel’s leadership in this space, where do you see CDMA demand headed, and how long can Nortel realistically rely on CDMA as a money-making market?
Today’s telecom infrastructure market is going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment brought on by the global economic conditions, particularly in the US. Having said that, we continue to see strength in many segments of the market with operators investing in expansions and upgrades of today’s current technologies. Nortel has done reasonably well in this environment by growing many of our businesses in markets that are essentially flattish.
As an example, Nortel has shown great strength in CDMA over the past year by acquiring an incremental 2% in market share. We continue to focus in 2008 around improving the quality of our products and customer relationships and selectively growing our market share in CDMA and other technologies. At the same time, we’re beginning to see carriers committing to 4G and we expect commercial deployments starting in 2010. It is essential that Nortel is early to market with a strong portfolio of solutions to play a significant role in next generation mobility to ensure to ensure that we successfully transition our customer base and our own revue from today’s existing technologies.
