Lets talk about Henderson capability.
You wrote:When you refer to samples 3Comm may have received from VLNC "a year ago," you are presumably referring to hand-made prototypes from Nevada?
As you recall, the VLNC S-3 dated 12/21/98 states that "no such production samples have been provided to any OEM."
According to last May and June conference calls, the coating and laminating equipment in Henderson is identical to the equipment in NI. In fact, it was shipped from NI to Henderson. It is automatic, and capable of producing a large amount of laminate. However, they likely don't run for very long at a time in Henderson, because of the amount of material it makes.
The assembly (cut and paste) equipment in Henderson are likely similar to NI equipment, just smaller and capacity constrained. And probably human operated.
Final packaging etc, is likely done by hand.
I don't see any reason why the batteries produced from this process won't be suitable for test and design purposes.
Finally, Ultralife first indicated the availablity of batteries from their line in October, and first revealed production samples from this line were given to customers in the December annual meeting. Since Valence is shipping batteries from NI in earnest, then there is only about 8-10 weeks difference in production sampling (at most) between the two. I can't see how this difference is all that meaningful, especially considering Valence's much larger production capacity.
Since Ultralife has never really discussed the possibility of other battery sizes, and has concentrated on their cellphone size in press releases and announcements, the possibility that they are providing the Palm batteries is surprising. I think its a long shot that either Ultralife or TNB could be providing the Palm batteries, which leaves me with Valence, even though you don't like it.
Paul |
