I remain confident that at least one OEM announcement should occur at E3. Like you, I have been concerned that Wave was wasting valuable pre-expo publicity by not making an early announcement, assuming we are correct in believing one is imminent. Lately, though, I have started to see the positive side of an E3 venue for launching new product and Wave would have a far more captive audience. A lot more spontaneous excitement could be generated where there are lots of people, including those from the media and investment community. We still must give credence to the following statement made by Wave's president, Steven Sprague on 5/25/98:
Message 4587443.
I realize that I may have been haste in reading too much into the 'Creative Inspire' link from Wave's Great Stuff network, however I also feel that there may still be a possible deal between the two because Creative would have the same incentive to include the WaveMeter on its peripheral products as would Hauppauge Computer Works.
As a side note, a reliable third party source indicated that Wave and HP are still progressing but no target date is known. Originally there were reports that a deal could potentially be worked out before the end of this month, but if a deal does happen between the two, I would not be surprised to see it occur later in June. HP is apparently more focused on the low-cost encryption capabilities of the Wave chip for the PC so E3 may not be suitable for that sort of announcement.
Aside from the possibility that IBM may finally be ready to move forward with Wave in their Aptiva line, my bet would have to be put on Ingram Micro (IM) as a likely partner announcement at E3. IM, also a participant at E3, has a natural interest to get involved with digital content distribution since they are the world's largest software distributor and they have just completed a new facility near Federal Express in Memphis that can assemble 8 million PCs per year. Three more are under construction or development in other parts of the world. These plants probably assemble PCs with very low margins so a Wave revenue-sharing deal should be attractive to them. BTW, their primary boxmaker clients are IBM, HP and Compaq.
Let's hang in there through the weekend.
Wahoograd |
