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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chaz who wrote (6244)	9/13/1999 10:53:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

I just sold out of Q at 156 1/8th. No tax consequence for me, and I did not want to take a chance. I will buy back in later this week, after the smoke clears.

To: chaz who wrote (6244)	9/14/1999 4:12:00 AM
From: FLSTF97	Respond to of 54805

Relative to flat panels... I think that long term they will be commoditized unless: Somebody finds a way to achieve high yields that are protected by patents/trade secrets Last I heard yields still are around 50% thus the high prices. The company Photon Dynamics has (or at least had) unique patented technology that helps the manufacturer locate and repair defective areas on the FPD. By all rights, they should be wildly successful, but they are not. (warning; my knowledge of this firm goes back about 5 years to when I tried to help them analyze their market.) My personal take is that they are in a razor blade market but that they refuse to recognize it (that's the analysis I provided to them long ago.) I won't go into the gory details, but suffice it to say there is a proprietary part in their machines that needs to be replaced often. The overall machine are relatively expensive (at that time $300k to over $1 mil)and this part is/ was cheap a few thousand dollars. If they would(or maybe they finally have, again I'm going back years in my knowledge) adopt the razor blade model by essentially giving away the machine and charging much more for the consumable part, they could be a mini-gorilla. There is no doubt (in my mind) that their system would enable a major reduction in FPD pricing. As far as some of the other mentioned plays in FPD, I'm not aware of any unique competitive advantage. I do own some CFMT, but doubt it would ever become a gorilla within this (or any other market)