By your reasoning, the 3Com announcement is almost impossible.
Yet there it is in 'black and white'.
No one was mass producing batteries six months ago, and therefore no one was providing production samples. The only production samples we know of, have come from ULBI's cellphone line, and only since October/November. Ultralife never said anything about sizes other than cellphone sizes, until last month's annual meeting when they revealed they would have a notebook sized battery. They still haven't indicated the capability of producing a size similar to the Palm, or for that matter any size other than their one cellphone size and a forthcoming notebook size. Valence has publicly indicated that they are geared to up to produce four different sizes of cells.
It is pretty clear from what I've read, that Ultralife and TNB are targeting the cellphone market, while Valence pushed the notebook/laptop market as priority, but geared up to produce four different types of batteries. This cost Valence money and time, but puts them alone in a position to attack multiple markets at this time.
I view it as highly likely that Valence is the supplier for the Palm units, and the launch timing of April/May is consistent with the start-up of Valence's battery facilities in NI over the last several months. Its also consistent with Valence's decisions to purchase and install significantly more production equipment than the other current producers.
We'll see if its as ridiculous as you believe, that Valence could be the supplier.
Paul
Vaen |
