Ray, I agree, the overall battery market is much larger. I was wondering whether the 15 million laptop estimate includes Europe and Asia.
Also, the growth rates for Asia and some lesser developed regions for cellphones could accelerate due to the absence of copper and fiber optic systems over large geographic areas. The availability of telephones is no longer limited to having wiring in place to connect to. It is my understanding that Valence has placed more equipment on order with the continued belief that they can sell all they can produce.
Since Valence has been sampling and talking with scores of OEM's and other potential customers, they may have access to more accurate market data than anyone on the thread can obtain from estimates published on the internet.
In fact, Valence should have firsthand information from their customers as to how many Laptops, cellphones, pda's, camcorders, blood pumps, Battlefield vests, rifles, Navy seal delivery systems, artillery fusing systems, two way radios etc that these customers expect to need batteries for or are negotiating orders for.
If Valence's batteries have been found clearly superior, which I believe to be the case, their market share should be limited only by quantities they are able to produce for quite some time except for specific low-volume applications.
This could explain why Lev mentioned license agreements as a mechanism for increasing market share past the limitations of their own capability of building plants and bringing their own production on line. |
