Sybase has reported a profit for its fourth-quarter which is down
year on year. However it managed to beat Wall Street expectations
thanks to a solid performance from its mobile and wireless products
division.
The company's iAnywhere Solutions subsidiary, which makes mobile
and wireless products for accessing corporate databases on the
road, recorded its strongest revenue and operating profit to date,
said John Chen, the company's chairman, president and chief
executive officer. He described the quarter's performance as
"solid".
Excluding some costs and expenses, net income for the quarter ended
31 December 2001, was £22m, down from £32m a year earlier.
Revenue for the quarter was £166m, compared to fourth-quarter
revenue of £183m in 2001, Sybase said.
Sybase has been branching out from its core database business and
into new markets for Internet-related business software. Its
database and tools contributed approximately 75% to revenue this
quarter, with the remainder coming from iAnywhere and from Sybase's
business software products, such as its application server. That is
down from 90% about four years ago, Chen said.
Sybase hopes to continue that trend, drawing as much as 50% of
revenue from non-database products in three to four years, Chen
said. The database business is saturated in most parts of the world
and e-business software offers bigger growth potential, he said.
Oracle, which leads the database market, has also been looking to
applications and other businesses for faster growth.
While Sybase's larger rivals have aligned themselves with
particular technology platforms, Sybase's strategy is to remain
neutral and not favour one development environment over
another.
However, Chen said he is keen on using Java because of the
potential for Microsoft to make .net a "proprietary" technology,
meaning customers would have to buy Microsoft software in order to
build .net applications.
"I see with .net a potential for Microsoft to become proprietary,
and being an open systems company and wanting to have a piece of
the pie, I will vote for Java before .net. But I will still support
both," he said.