I have no doubt the #'s are wrong, but I do recall that there was mention that Sanyo was no longer selling the flashback, because they had sold out NCI's complete inventory. In a report they were called 'one of their large customers'.
All Sanyo ever committed to do was to take our flashback inventory, have NCI repackage it for Europe and the UK & place their name on the device. Sanyo continues to wait to see the next generation products, which may encompass the Intel product design features, and some of the features of Lanier's product, which are not exclusive to Lanier.
I view Intel's request of NCI and their gameplan being to take these designs to their customers and then request or direct them back to NCI for design and/or manufacturing assistance. Intel wants to sell their StrongArm processor and should their customers not run with this design, then I foresee Intel doing their own portable product line with NCI's assistance. NCI is in the OEM business and this is how it's done.
Management is very focused on getting and servicing new customers. Their end product for Lanier achieved a major goal for the design and development team, which I assume must be on a real high. For engineers who are often doing boring work, this must have been a very different and entertaining fun project because there was a finished product that has a purpose. Unfortunately, not many engineers get to see their efforts from beginning to end result in a product.
People used to quip about Bell Labs, now Lucent, that they have more patents than any other entity and less to show for all those efforts.
Lucent is now a very different co. that has to generate profits. It is a company with fantastic talent which is now well mobilized to produce. LU has more announcements on the DJ than probably any other U.S. co. and their skills and interests are global. I particularly like their solid interest in voice technology for transmission and retrieval, compression, and encryption. At some future point, NCI's niche skills with getting voice/sound quickly on and off of portable storage medium may interest Lucent. It's a segment (puzzle piece)that Lucent could be looking for, as did Intel.
Best to all: |
