Shih Jen Liao, HP will be using Warp's technology. On the
HP website under the Internet Imaging Partners Profile is
the following about Warp10's Digital Toolkit (I'm not
sure who wrote it HP or Warp, but nevertheless it is on
an HP web page):
"The Digital toolkit provides a robust set of tools for
businesses, web developers and integrators to create
effective multimedia content management systems. The
core functionality consists of an object repository
including a powerful object oriented database, asset
capture and indexing capabilities, search and retrieval
and access security.
Integrated with HP's OpenPix server the toolkit allows
for quick deployment of powerful interactive imaging
solutions."
The link is image.hp.com
It appears that both companies view this as a mutually
beneficial partnership: From the Warp press release:
'Access to HP's worldwide resources for promotion and
distribution will greatly increase our ability in
partnership with our System Integration partners, to
bring Digital toolkit-based solutions to the market
place'
From the HP press release:
'Our relationship with Warp 10 is an important step in
our plans to aggressively seed the marketplace with the
best internet imaging solutions'.
I believe the above statements and the fact that Warp 10
is listed in the HP press release entitled 'Image Rich
Content on the Web to Make Online Storefronts the Next
Big E-Commerce Opportunity for Business', support the
idea that HP will be using the Warp 10 technology and it
is reasonable to believe that the toolkit has been
validated as useful.
Please excuse my naivette (sp?), but when you think about it HP would seem to possibly be a logical leader in Internet imaging, as they have vast experience and knowledge on how to transmit data from the computer to images on paper. I'm not sure if that argument holds water or not, but an alliance with a logical leader would be ideal. Just a thought.
The question is, how will revenues be generated, and what
kind of margins are there? Has anyone asked this of the
company?
Regarding your first two points, their expenses aren't
really zero. In the latest quarter they were between
300,000 and 400,000. In prior quarters they were in the
millions. Their website indicates that they have 20
employees. I'm not sure how many are developing the
products. They produced other products which appear to
have been slow to catch on, and I apologize but I don't
know or understand the ATM vs non-ATM issue. It would
appear however that the development has been primarily in the past, and now their main goal would be to sell the
products.
I'm curious about their other products. Warner Brothers
and others had some complimentary things to say about their Warp-Res and Warp-Accelerator(I think that's the right one), but the revenues have been very
slow to build, such that most investors have given up. I wonder if this is a situation where others are outselling
them or the market is just slow to develop. Does anyone
know?
The comments on Warp's web page about having no direct
competitors and being poised to become a leader in a
market estimated at 5-6 billion would support the idea that the market is slower to develop than
anticipated, since if the market was already exploding we would see it in Warp's revenues if they have little direct competition.
At the same time it is one of those claim
that sounds so outrageous you have to wonder if their
claims have any real value? Why is the market slow to
develop? Are bigger competitors gearing up for an
explosion in growth that will leave Warp a dwarf? How
does the HP announcement fit in to the strategic plan? With the explosion in internet everything, this announcement would seem to be only good news. The question is how good?
Wish I knew more. Ted
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