I would be very suspect of the message but will file in the gray matter. I have a fairly large core LHSPF holding and buy and sell an additional share amount at different times. You may think about doing the same if you are getting a little nervous.
MSFT does have history of pulling stunts as mentioned in the message. I owned Citrix when they tried to pull the "we will just develop it ourselves (thin client protocol using ICA)". They also have that large (110 people) contingent of supposedly brain power working on many, many different advanced technologies. However I will pose these questions to the board:
- Has anyone else heard about this MSFT effort?
- Can they accomplish such a project in the last 1-2 years?
- Even if true do you think MSFT has dedicated the resources for the vocabularies, languages and apps like medical, legal and law enforcement
- If Microsoft comes up with a new engine are they going to allow companies like IBM and Dragon to use it or are they going to tie it in with apps. from someone they own a fairly large piece of (as you know they own 6% of L&H which is equivalent to about $150 million) giving L&H a more commanding lead in this market.
Remember, as someone aptly put it on this board many moons ago, "they wear plaid in redmond", meaning I don't know if they are going to have the vocabulary and language core competency in Redmond. MSFT is not the one buying all of the obscure companies in Portugal, China, Saudia Arabia, etc. L&H is.
Also, as you know, continous speech recognition is only 1 of 4 businesses for L&H and I think it still contributes the least to sales and profitability (it's brand new). It has the highest profile though - even when describing L&H to friends I talk about speech recognition versus speech compression, text to speech and internet translation (translation services).
To sum it up I would always be wary of the evil empire but when the evil empire is on your side you can win big! I have been reading article after article about how the PC market does not have any way to grow right now because processor speed has caught up with application complexity. In my opinion for Wintel continous speech recognition is a godsend.
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