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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Valueman who wrote (6814)	8/24/1999 7:01:00 PM
From: Rocket Scientist	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29987

IMO, the handset quantity forecast has always been maddening, because a number is useless without a concrete statement of where that number of handsets is supposed to be: at the mnfctrs shipping dock, locked up in customs somewhere (remember Iridium's problems in that regard?), on a retailer's shelves, in the hands of a paying(?)customer .... without knowing this, the number could mean anything. BLS usually uses the formula "in the distribution pipeline" which doesn't exactly provide a warm fuzzy feeling anymore.

To: Valueman who wrote (6814)	8/24/1999 9:32:00 PM
From: mthomas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Why not call Andy Rowland and ask HIM where the handsets will be, AirTouch will be the ones handling this end of the business, no? Martin

To: Valueman who wrote (6814)	8/25/1999 6:56:00 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 29987

<There will be approx 65K phones available by the end of the year, and rampup expectations are in control........says Jeanette.> Vman, you have misread it. It says 'approx 65K phones'. That means not 65K but about that many, more or less. Probably less and maybe quite a few less. Also, I notice that "...expectations are in control..." so people's rampup expectations are controlled and not too exuberant. No irrational exuberance in this thread. Anyway, with the carefully planned soft launch, with only Argentina in operation there won't be too many handsets needed anyway. Airtouch is doing rotational marketing in the premium price vertical market segment, but doing a very, very soft launch. They are either 180 degrees rotated or 360 degrees rotated from Iridium, depending on your point of view and the angle Iridium is pointing at the time. It certainly looks as though Bernie Schwartz owes that Gulfstream Weightlifter $200. There isn't going to be any September launch worth calling a launch. In October they'll do a harder launch by announcing start of service in some places and will sell a few handsets at the Geneva show, out there in the tent with not much guarantee on where they can be used. Let's hope Globalstar delays their TV ads which imply these handsets can be used anywhere. GG thinks they can and thousands of his readers will be sucked in. They are interesting ads, but the coverage message is untrue at present so best to can them for now. There would only be one viewer in 100,000 going to buy anyway in the USA this year, so it's not worth showing until there is a system and handsets ready to sell and people who know how to sell them. You'd think there would be a day by day, blow by blow, account of proceedings on the Globalstar Web site. It's like visiting a cemetery with nothing new to show for it. No flashing lights or red arrows pointing to "ORDER HERE", click on the handsets to test the functions, rotate it etc. No pictures of the world with current coverage shown. No photos of the handsets up close in gory detail with the innards showing. It's a single product [well, 3 handsets and a few fixed models] so it doesn't need to be a dull 'corporate' site. It should have hot 'BUY NOW' sections along with all the other information. Prices should be low to create marketing mayhem to move those minutes NOW! But no, it seems that billions and billions and billions and billions and tens of billions of minutes are going to be poured down the drain, unused with not even a single cent being earned from them. That's waste on a much grander scale than even the worst of the centrally planned economies ever achieved. But then, this is a centrally planned operation. No market decisions. Customers will NOT be setting the prices. Service Providers and Globalstar will set the prices and allocation of minutes just like in the good old Kremlin ways. There will be mountains of shoes, but no shoelaces. People will freeze barefoot. Billions of barrels of gasoline but no cars to put it in. Thousands of tractors, but no ploughs. If any handsets do make it to stores, the sales people won't know what they are or how they work, where they work and all the stuff. There is no way on earth that anyone will figure out that such things can be sold via the Web these days direct from production line, ready to turn on, direct by Fedex to the subscriber So yes, it does look like a lumbering, faltering start. Lucky the Globalstar system has such low costs that by the end of next year it will still be capable of being priced and managed correctly to really get some major subscriber interest and profits for shareholders. There is no evidence that Service Providers are competing to get a big supply of handsets from the producers by early orders and cash on the barrelhead. Hey, maybe it's a cunning strategy to get ICO to give up before they start. Wall Street will take one look, see few handsets moving out of the shops [if they get to the shops] and declare it to be another satellite disaster area. ICO will really be dropped then and a few months later, Globalstar can slash prices and get with the Feral Marketing Programme with a monopoly position. Since there is near zero information, maybe the handsets don't actually work properly. Maybe handoff is bad, link budgets are in deficit and I KNOW foliage does stop the calls. Slow driving under an overpass isn't going to be good for it either. Given the ease of filling a web site with a billions bits of information for information freaks, you'd think there would be all the news you can eat just a click away. Nope! No news is bad news. I might have to give another sell warning [like the last one at $36 early 1998 which was right on the button and the Don't Buy at $24 BZ]. Don't want to be like the analysts with a strong buy on Iridium the day it hit bankruptcy and a hold when trading was stopped. I'm betting Motorola gets it for nothing, keeps it ticking over and slashes the minute price below terrestrial making money from handset leasing which will give subscribers more confidence that an outright purchase of a handset. They'll sell a billion minutes at maybe 20c per minute and lease a million handsets at $100 per month. Equity and bond people lose it all. Motorola cleans up! Kyocera too if they agree to help fund keeping it running which they seem willing to do. The USA can buy a chunk for military purposes. Maurice PS: Best to start retail pricing at $10 a minute with handsets at $10,000 so when those figures are cut by a factor of 10, people will think it a real bargain. Then cut them AGAIN by a factor of 2 and it will be pandemonium to get a handset. [Just kidding folks and trying to show how starting high is NOT a good strategy for this situation though of course it is for some consumer electronics with limited production capacity and smallish markets].