DES OWENS, ACTIX

As a developer of software designed to measure the performance of wireless networks, Actix enjoys an enviable position in the industry's ongoing economic predicament: Not only do its products help carriers optimize networks and reduce costs, they also sell at price points that tend to fall beneath carriers' capex-cutting radar.

“We don't have a huge-ticket item, but we do sell many copies of it,” said Des Owens, president of Actix. “So we can end up with reasonably good revenue numbers by executing many smaller deals rather than very large ones.”

Those reasonably good revenue numbers prompted Actix to take a somewhat unusual step for a privately held company: publicize its earnings. In March, Actix reported unaudited revenues of $20 million and pre-tax profits of $2.6 million for its fiscal year 2002, an increase of 36% over the previous year.

Actix's embedded position in so many carrier networks is among the reasons for that growth, Owens said. Globally, Actix boasts 130 equipment supplier and wireless carrier customers. The upgrade-friendly nature of software makes getting follow-on business easier than it might be for, say, a supplier of expensive base station infrastructure.

“Because we were in early, it's always easier for carriers to justify buying more of what they're already using,” Owens said. “We're not saying, ‘You need to go buy a whole new one.’ That makes it a little easier to keep the momentum going.”

As far as momentum is concerned, Actix is trying to stay close to technology changes in the wireless sector. It has developed versions of its product to mine performance metrics from mobile data networks like CDMA IXRTT and IX EV-DO, for example, to be appealing to carriers deploying those technologies.

Even as Actix finds success in its niche, however, Owens is looking to carriers for signs of innovation that suggest recovery.

“Wall Street is looking to see what the industry is going to do for growth,” he said. “Everything's sort of wilted, but nobody's really done anything radical. It does feel like the industry needs something more imaginative to just get things firing again.”

Actix itself, however, is taking a pragmatic approach to evolution. “Because we are — knock on wood — able to continue to grow at a reasonable clip, we don't feel like we need to necessarily do anything radical to change that,” Owens said. “We know our little segment and we're in a reasonably healthy situation, so we just want to run harder and faster so that we can leave a bit more daylight between us and some of the other offerings.”