Zi Corp Rides China Market To Record Heights
By William J. McMahon
ChinaOnline News
(12/20/1999) NASDAQ darling Zi Corporation ? a Canadian
developer of input software that allows Chinese users to
interact with consumer electronics in their own language ?
has put together a string of licensing deals since last summer
that boosted its share price by nearly 2,000 percent.
Chief Executive Michael Lobsinger told ChinaOnline that his
company?s share price [ZICA], which now sits near US$20
and which was trading for as low as US$0.82 last June, is still
undervalued.
"Up until now we?ve been a story stock, we?ve been a
relationship company," Lobsinger says. "Everybody?s waiting
for the revenue ramp-up."
"In October we were on five Ericsson phones, in the first
quarter of next year we should be on 15 platforms, by the end
of the second quarter we should be on 30 platforms," he said.
"Our royalty stream should start to kick in."
The licensing deals with Ericsson, Alcatel, and China?s top
five GSM mobile phone makers will put Zi input software on
the majority of GSM mobile phones in China next year,
Lobsinger says.
Additionally, Zi has signed licensing arrangements with
several Chinese set-top box makers, including Legend,
China?s largest PC maker. These set-top boxes give TVs the
functionality of computers, allowing Chinese users to email
and surf the Internet via their televisions.
"Every product that goes out that has Zi on it, we get paid,"
Lobsinger says. "Every phone that is sold, every platform that
is sold, whether it be a set-top box or PDA or whatever."
The company?s software allows Chinese language speakers
to enter Chinese text by using a multiple stroke input system.
For set-top boxes, Lobsinger says that Zi created a handheld
channel changer in which to load its input system. "So if you
now take a set-top box, plug it into your TV, and look at your
handheld channel changer and imagine eight Chinese strokes
on it,.., you?re now doing word processing, or Internet
connectivity or ecommerce."
The impressive string of licensing deals has not come to an
end, either. Lobsinger says that BeijingZhou and ZiLog (no
relation) are each planning to roll out personal digital
assistants loaded with Zi input software next year, and one of
China?s largest karaoke machine makers, Shanghai General
Electric, is putting the Zi system on its karaoke microphone.
"We really believe that [the set-top box market] is the killer
application for China and the globe," he says. "A lot of the
OEMs are now beginning to realizing that there is money in
China and they do buy products."
While the coming year is likely to be a sort of test of the long
term viability of Zi?s Chinese language product, Lobsinger
remains upbeat, undaunted and, like all entrepreneurs,
confident that his product will make the difference.
"How do you produce Chinese text in an intuitive way?"
Lobsinger asks. "This is what we are capable of doing."
To contact William J. McMahon:
P: (312) 335-8881
F: (312) 335-9299
E: bmcmahon@chinaonline.com |
