Well, guys, I couldn't avoid fonix even when I tried. Some rabid (well, I didn't actually check the rabies status, but he met all the clinical criteria) fonix fan dissed LHSPF in favor of fonix, and I got embroiled. In the process, I tried to check out the AcuVoice story, and had a couple of thoughts to pass on.
First, I'm a little surprised; I detect not the slightest curiosity about the financial terms of the deal. Are you so blindly confident of fonix's management to assume it was a good deal? It's possible it was a good deal; it's possible it wasn't so good. How does anyone know?
Second, I have an idle speculation to pass along. As you may know, fonix was formed in its present iteration by injecting an active, private company into the shell of an inactive, public company. I forget the precise details of this, but John Harris has them. It's a not uncommon trick to avoid the hassles (and scrutiny) involved with taking a private company public. I'm wondering if fonix isn't about to metamorphose again. It'll still retain the fonix name, still have the "2nd generation" ASR technology as its goal, but the majority of its business will be the AcuVoice part.
I came upon this thought trying to figure the logic of the AcuVoice acquisition, while noting the absence of any further licensing agreements, with Siemens or anyone else. Here's "the human-computer interface leader", with only a deal to do a few answering machines, but claiming to have the Holy Grail for ASR, buying a text-to-speech company, which although good, is very small potatoes compared to ASR's potential. One reason seemed immediately obvious - AcuVoice has revenues, which fonix has very little of - and perhaps anticipates very little for a while to come (I'd put all that in italics or bold, but I forgot how to do that!). Now, it makes sense - fonix's management is losing faith in its own technology (I know, this is heresy, and I will get flamed), and preparing to survive by picking up something good, albeit small potatoes, and running with it, while its engineers get a little longer to salvage ASR.
Now there are several obvious problems to this theory, which even I can see - namely OGI, Siemens, Henton, Kim, and Oberteuffer's recent commitments to fonix's ASR technology, and why would AcuVoice, which has a good product, pick fonix to sell itself to? Well, the latter part of the question is unanswerable for now, from what I can tell, because AcuVoice remains a mystery. As for the first part, all those folks who said such nice things about fonix, all I can say is - the only nice things that count in my book anymore are licensing agreements, and in anyone's estimation, fonix has missed again - no follow-up from Siemens yet, or even hints of same, and no other companies on board - which all you bulls were expecting to happen by this time as recently as a couple months ago. Perhaps this is a wonderful technology in search of a use, or perhaps it's not so wonderful, but the reality is, which perhaps management is also coming to realize, the rest of the world is making deals left and right, and fonix needs a foot in the door - and AcuVoice, rather than its neural network chip, will be its ticket.
OK, so this is all speculation, and I only pass it along because I've enjoyed discussing fonix with some of you guys. For those who want to flame me, save your flaming breath; it's just idle speculation, and I don't expect anyone to make any investment decisions based on it. But for goodness sakes, quit being so blindly faithful that you don't even try to get the numbers and run them to determine just what the AcuVoice acquisition will mean for earnings for this company!
Bob |
