James, I listened to the CC and, like Carolyn, I was very impressed.
I'll try to answer your questions and report some of the other comments that I remember from the call. However, it has been more than 24 hours since I listened, and, as you'll see, I'm something less than an expert in these matters, so I may be shaky on some of the details.
1. Re the auto market: In general, Ron said that they've found that the auto market for embedded products moves very slowly, and the direction for the industry is being established in Europe. Most importantly, he said that WIND made an investment in a German company (can't remember the name) that has allowed WIND to make recent inroads into the auto market.
2. Re Lucent: Don't remember that he said anything very specific, other than the fact that WIND has had many design wins at Lucent, and that they had established a strong relationship. As I recall, in response to a question from Jason Cogan, Ron said that Lucent's own RTOS (Inferno) wasn't much of a factor.
3. Ron also downplayed the recent announcement by Cisco re QNX. He intimated that the announcement was made by one small division within Cisco. He said that WIND continues to be (I'm paraphrasing here) far and away the leading supplier of RTOS development tools to Cisco, and that the relationship between the two companies is as strong as ever.
The thing I found most intriguing (and maybe I misunderstood, so someone please correct me if I'm mistaken) on the call was Ron's statement that I2O has been held back because Microsoft hadn't released an OSM (?), and that I2O would now begin to ramp up in earnest because MSFT finally released the OSM recently.
Ron also said that I2O revenue would begin to show up in Q2 and Q3, and that the revenue would be "material" which he later defined as "in the millions."
He also said that all the hoopla over embedded Java doesn't mean a whole lot right now, since both the Sun and HP JVMs have too big of a footprint to be used in an embedded environment.
Finally, Ron hemmed and hawed when asked about the decline in deferred revenue, but if I remember correctly, he blamed it on an unnamed Japanese company. I had the impression that the company either cancelled orders, or defaulted on money owed to WIND.
However, he said specifically that WIND's business continues to be very strong in Asia. |
