Abstract
The rise of the internet is the next wave of opportunity after the PC revolution, this new technology has again drastically changed the way of living of humans. Because the rise of the internet created new demands of optical communications products, within a short period of time, the optical communications industry become popular. But due the burst of the internet bubble in 2000, many companies in this industry fell hard. Taiwanese firms that entered this industry in 1998 was no exception.The author is fortunate enough the witness the competition in the optical communications industry. The focus of this research is conducted on optical transceivers, a sub-industry of optical communications, using a case of a real company as an example. This company is a Taiwanese optical communications company that not only survived the internet bubble burst, but also was able to maintain the same level of profits before and after the internet bubble burst. This is why this company was selected to analyze its development history, from startup, initial growth stage, strong growth stage, increase in business, decline, change of strategy, turnaround, new innovations, and … etc; as well as the relationship between its management team at startup, competitive environment, and strategy.During the past few years of competition in the industry, many industry analysis reports and advices had been collected, often they would suggest the government strategically subsidize or assist the industry raise its bar when competing with foreign competitors. But from the view of a Taiwanese medium/small sized enterprise, rather than having the government assist the industry, it is more practical the resolve the issue without government intervention. After all, it is inevitable that there will be competition among Taiwanese firms in the same industry.Of course the company used in the case study can maintain its profits despite of losses incurred by its competitors raises an interesting question of what advantage does this company have over others. Are there any unique events that occurred to this company? What could be learned from this company?