Investing ahead of the handset generations: the bet on mobile test (2003)

Betting on the wave — an investment in patience

What marks this decision is that resources went not to the results in front of it but to a generation that had not yet arrived. Straight after the collapse of the IT bubble had taught it what inventory can do, Anritsu did not retreat from general-purpose instruments — it invested ahead into the 3G that was coming next. Laying in technology before a market stands up is a bet that, when it lands, opens an opportunity at every generational change, and when it misses leaves only the spending, early and heavy. Stepping into that wager at the bottom of a crisis is what can be seen to have supported the later rise of mobile test to the core of the company.

Yet the strength built by investing early is the reverse face of a weakness: the same wave that carries the business also shakes it. Each turn from 3G to LTE to 5G brings its crest and its trough, and once 5G is past its peak the next trough waits. Splitting the world with a technology that measures generational change, the more that technology tilts toward mobile, the less free the company is from the cycle of telecom capital spending. What is asked next of a company that reached the summit by investing early is how to widen a strength that rides the wave into a strength that does not depend on it.