Parx,
It's possible that fonix passed on Intel and/or Microsoft, but I doubt it. If they offered as much as Siemens, why would fonix have said no? And if they offered less, then that's their way of saying it's not the Holy Grail, because Siemen's offer sure wasn't a blockbuster.
Siemens may believe this is the best they've seen, but both Microsoft and SGS-Thompson have placed their bets on LHSPF. As you say, fonix is at considerable risk that one of the competing technologies will end up as the de facto standard, perhaps even before fonix/Siemens or other partners can get to market - i.e., with the launch of Windows 98.
Fonix originally claimed that they had the way to establish user-independent, continuous speech voice recognition, and that those using HMM would be unable to accomplish this, since they were tied to a dead-end technology. Now it looks like they're in a race, and getting a late start, so investors are going to have to hope that this is truly outstanding technology AND that the management team can execute flawlessly. I guess you know what I think the odds of that are.
Bob |
