Hi Kurt, Thanks for the reply. Surprised to hear them talking about us on Yahoo. Can't personally find the time to jump back and forth.
Anyway, maybe I'll start out with the cheap shot and then it'll get better. GMGC is trading under $2 again and this clearly reflects the thoughts of the market. Most people are traders and they have learned to sell into all the news as the company can't seem to get anything solid going and all these announcements have turned out to be fluff with no substance.
One can hope that there will finally be something material that the company can hang its hat on. The loss of Intuit seems to be greater than the gain of GM.
<I hate the preferred holders by the way.>
Yeah, but what's the point? They are only a symptom of a sick company. It never would have happened if GM had better choices, or better management. Judging by their results, solid investors were correct to not invest.
<I had today off (Vets Day) and must have looked at current quotes 100 times today. I am not an expert by the way (that is my disclaimer). At one time the bid size was 160K and the ask size was 20K yet the price of the stock continued to decline. I would estimate that 90% of the time I looked, the bid size greatly outnumbered the ask size. Me being a capitalistic pig dog, I would think that if the demand is greater than supply then the price would go up. This was definitely not the case today. The price was manipulated today. Manipulation at its finest. My question is why? Something is going on behind the scenes that I can't answer. I am p.o.ed that I don't have the ability to do anything about this manipulation.>
Perhaps true, but a lot of shares traded. I think it's a better chance of manipulation when the volumes are less, but who knows as 1 million shares here doesn't actually cost much. One thing, when there are a lot of buys and the price doesn't go up, that could also mean someone is dumping a position into every buy. In fact, they could be holding the price up to complete the sale and then when they've finished the price collapses. Maybe the market maker was supporting the share price and was now dumping inventory in the high 2's for a good gain?
<I disagree with your cynical attitude concerning GM and GM not being an innovator. GM is the #1 Fortune 500 company. They have the muscle and money. They wouldn't have chosen GMGC if they thought GMGC would go out of business. GM sees a multi-billion dollar market and they want to capitalize on this market ASAP. Read some PRs from the last 2 months or so from GM. They are being very aggressive IMO.>
Maybe I've been away too long, but my impression has been that GM wasn't the leading edge car. Maybe that's a personal choice, and things could have changed. The Holden, GM's car here in Aus is less than stellar. But, that's not important. Do you think this agreement leads to a system that will be used in all luxury cars, or one that limits them to working with GM? I can't remember the details, but Yahoo has done something interesting about outfitting Taxis in San Francisco with Internet.
<>>Now, the company is late to market with a product that is being repeated by many look alikes>>
I agree with you to a point on this. Why wouldn't it take other companies the same amount of time to "beta" test their product prior to going to market. Also, the ace in the hole is Kenya. Per SM during the CC, Kenya is now deployed in the NOC. VUI and Kenya has the potential of being the next killer app. SM also said said keep you your eyes open when he reference XCIT and myTalk (ie Kenya IMO) The question is when will it bring in the recurring revenues?>
Yes, Kenya is the focus now. It could differentiate GM from the others, or even be a powerful product on it's own. I wonder why Kenya would need to be thought of as a Voice product? Doesn't this product work for anyone on the net in Graphic form as well? Couldn't it be going off and eBay or whatever while I type this message?
From Stephen:
<That requires a long answer, one which I dont have the time for now, and maybe not the ability to answer. However, as much as I agree with Mark on many things, I do not see the necessity for GMGC to jump with both feet into WAP at this point. WAP is in release 1.x presently. While it is always easy to say that first releases are buggy, there are more pressing issues such as digital network coverage (all of them claim it. I dont believe it), phone command simplicity or complexity(phones dont have QWERTY keyboards), memory(only the Neopoint 1000 that I know of), and finally and most importantly what does the customer think. Wireless networks costs are not the same as ISP wireline costs, i.e. fixed monthly subscriptions>
There were a lot of questions about WAP, but it seems clear that there is a huge development process going on to make this product work. It has been an amazing process watching it unfold. There are 2 or 3 press releases a day about new products and alliances.
Is it buggy, perhaps. Will it get better, most definitely. Is it the long-term solution, in its current form no.
I'd say WAP also has a window of opportunity like Portico had. Will they also miss? Doesn't look like it and the interesting thing is this is not a one company project, but one of 100's of companies. Perhaps if Portico had been some sort of platform which other companies could have taken on to develop, it would have progressed in a different way?
As far as Qwerty keyboards, haven't you guys seen the 10 key systems? People are firing off great volumes of messages on 10 key. Most of these are used today on SMS and they are decidedly short. Yes, saying that you'll not like to type with toothpicks is still true. But, what's so special about recording a .wav file?
I was wondering how people would react to SI if all these messages were posted in .wav files. It would certainly be a different experience, and one I think would be less. I like the written word. It gives me a chance to reflect on what is being said. Sure, it's pretty hard to read while driving, but otherwise it seems better to me.
Interesting thing is they expect 1 billion wireless Internet users in 5 years. Awesome number. This can be achieved entirely with WAP. Can GM add something important to WAP. I'd say yes, but they better hurry up and do it. Why haven't they got a partnership yet? They'd better get going on this or they will yet again miss the boat. If they miss this boat, they will have nothing. They'll be doing another transformation like the last one where they had to drop all their work on handheld computers because it became obsolete.
Regards,
Mark |
