Ciena Corp vs Cisco Systems

 VERSUS 

Earnings per share (EPS) for Ciena Corp (CIEN) is currently negative and forecast to move towards the positive side starting next year after a 5 years drop in the net income. Cisco Systems (CSCO) however maintained a good EPS with it being increasing year after year but forecast to lower in 2014 (not much). Forecast would forever be forecast and many things can happen within a year especially on how fast technology moved in a year. Few years ago we were talking about mobile devices and today it all became so common that nobody cares about these powerful devices anymore.

Projected EPS for CIEN next year is only +0.05 a forecast that is so near towards the negative area? That is just not what I want to see. Furthermore, investing with Cisco would let us gain some dividends not much but compared to Ciena which gave none and potentially dividends coming in only a few years later is just not what I am looking for at the moment because I also see that the rally this year might cool off before mid of next year.

I still think even Cisco stands out far from Ciena, both would not be a good bet with the current shift in technology. If Apple is capable of producing programs such as Facetime on their devices, these operating system giants putting more on network communication research for our daily device could lower the market share of companies like Cisco. Nevertheless, Cisco still have a division on providing servers which is currently booming which then leads to cloud computing.

I believe the future is now held by the big software makers Microsoft or Apple or even the upcoming Google with their own computer operating system. I am sure network communication capabilities targeting businesses would be somewhere on top of their priority. Cisco or Ciena are not like companies such as Autodesk where they have real custom software for designing. But the market for communication and people to obtain easy/cheaper communication capabilities has expanded due to the processing power of our mobile devices now. Cisco and Ciena have to move themselves forward changing the way they integrate communications into cloud.