Alcon Vision Care is doomed...because the Asian Mafia recently promoted to run R&D are clueless wanks. The good ppl won't stay and the rest are scared to look sideways at these yahoos. Google lens will never happen.
I attended a meeting not long ago where a top R&D person from Alcon admitted during a presentation that Google is "very frustrated" with how Alcon works. Stated several times the two companies are "philosophically different" and work at completely different paces. Google moves at "warp speed using imagination and innovation" vs Alco that "doesn't". These were his exact words and he must have said 10 times not to expect anything anytime soon. It was a bit embarrassing considering every other ophthalmic company was present.
The Asian problem is not only in vision care look at the number of Chinese in surgical R&D for IOLs. I am not being racist but we need to accept the fact that China as a country has never been innovative they can only imitate and make it bigger and cheaper. The result of having so many of them in IOL R&D is we only make imitations now and call them innovations like trifocals, preloaded,clear etc... You have real innovation in the phaco equipment team and their racial mix is not heavily Asian....
The exodus of decent people (particularly managers ie RS) has already started. I don't trust these guys for one second. Their direct reports are too frightened to speak up or push back while they disenfranchise everyone in the organization. Can't believe a word they say and makes me lose faith in upper mgmt for not seeing through them. Frenchy didn't do us any favors leaving these guys in charge.....sigh. Once again Novartis touts their "values" but their actions don't reflect any true commitment to the corporate V&B.
The problems are the ELT and Novartis Financial Advisory Board. If buying necessary capital didn't take 3 years a lot more could get done much faster.
Understood and a valid point. However, the fact remains regardless of who is at fault of how Alcon isn't maintaining a level of confidence with Google or that every Ophthalmic company now knows it. There are other companies working as a single entity making greater leaps and bounds with this type of tech than Alcon w Google. The red tape from Alcon is unbelievable.
Dead project? Looks like Alcon is selling the Contact Lens Division so is there any reason to believe this technology will ever see the light of day? The answer is yes....from a competitor of course. Way to completely screw up yet another potential product. Is anybody keeping track, this must be a record?
even if it did materialize, the time period will be too long for this to stall Alcon's demise in the meanwhile.
idiots. Alcon could be selling the contact lens solution (CLC) portion of their business, NOT the contact lens business. Pay attention!!
You are currently speculating correctly. BY MANUEL BAIGORRI AND AARON KIRCHFELD Bloomberg News Novartis is considering the sale of Alcon’s contact lens care products business as the Swiss drugmaker seeks to improve growth at the Fort Worth-based eye-care unit, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The lens-care business may draw interest from competitors, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The proposed sale is at a preliminary stage and the company may decide against a disposal, the people said. A slump in the contact lens care business contributed to curtailing growth at Alcon in the second quarter, leading to Novartis missing analysts’ estimates for profit in the three-month period. Novartis is doing a “deep analysis” of Alcon’s businesses, and in January will report on a plan “to get this business back to a decent growth rate,” Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez told analysts and investors in October. “With the market shift to daily disposable lenses, Novartis will be questioning whether the lens care business is core or unnecessary,” said Nick Turner, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities. A representative for Novartis declined to comment. Revenue at Novartis’s contact care business — which sells products to clean, store and moisturize lenses — fell 7.4 percent to $646 million last year. A sale of the business may generate as much as $1.6 billion, according to Fabian Wenner, an analyst with Kepler Cheuvreux in Zurich.