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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Microvision (MVIS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve who wrote (3999)	1/10/2000 7:43:00 PM
From: Obewon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7721

Just got back from an over-lunch presentation of Microvision sponsored by Ragen MacKenzie in Seattle for its brokers and clients (Yes, I am still one even with the advent of online trading!). I only found out about it this morning but work just 50 yards away from the meeting site so what the heck - took a late lunch! Rick R. gave a 40 minute presentation on the company's technology and I must say that I thought that the presentation was more professional than the one at the last annual shareholders meeting. It was more concise, better organized and covered almost every aspect of the company (except financials and management experience - though it touched on both) in detail included all the milestones achieved in 1999. Included in the presentation was what appeared to be the entire Dateline NBC clip about medical uses of the VRD/RSD at WKNI. The clip shown was about three times longer than that shown on the Dateline airing on December 31 but I recognized several of the sequences. Rick and Steve Willey also had with them the Army aircrew prototype helmet (you could see the display reflecting on the optics from the front but couldn't put it on), the earlier prototype of the Leica display, and a new cellphone form-factored display unit (I don't remember seeing this at the Yahoo! clubmembers meeting). (The prototype Leica display was only monochrome VGA while the shipping beta units are monochrome SVGA.) The cellphone was slightly bulky by today's standards (about twice the size and weight of my analog cellphone) but not unreasonable for a demonstrator except for the large separate battery/drive unit/box. The display was monochrome red but as Steve explained that was due to the cutoff in engineering about four months ago. He said that if they had finished designing one today, they would have had the opportunity to make it full color or smaller or using a more standard battery, although probably not all three due to timing constraints rather than design ones. The company will probably have a full color cellphone display ready this year. The display slides out from the base of the phone and allowed a reasonable display picture (only red lines today unfortunately) when holding it up to your ear and mouth like a regular cellphone. If looking straight forward (like out the car front windshield as you drive), the display was not visible but if you looked down it was - handy safety feature IMHO. One problem I did see is that the display window is somewhat canted to assist people who are using their right hand to hold the phone. If you normally use the left hand (like me!), you won't be able to see the display at all unless you rotate the mouthpiece to about eye-level (and even then the display will be upside down unless the software allows for flipping the image). Also, several people there kept attempting to look at the display from a foot away from the phone so this may indicate some need to educate consumers on use. The lack of a demonstrator with full color SVGA was slightly disappointing as it is the most likely to provide the impact with individual consumers and brokers that were present in the meeting. Reading 12 point text off a VRD while varying the intensity to demonstrate the see-throught variability of the platform will possibly do more wonders in creating buzz than talk of market opportunity ($3B in defense aerospace; $2.8B in medical; $18B in industrial; and $18B in consumer displays) without showing product (not contract) revenues yet. I understand (and agree with) why one wasn't present due to the better uses that the few that do exist can be put to, but it would have had a more powerful impact. Steve mentioned that adding full color to the display doesn't add any appreciable increase in the size of the unit since the three LEDs will be packed next to each other along the same optical path. I brought a friend along that I've been mentioning MVIS to for some time now and he came out convinced its a winner after seeing and wearing the tech in person. Unfortunately, he must still convince his two fellow hedge fund managers. (BTW - Its a VERY small hedge fund (smaller than my portfolio) so don't get your hopes up too much.) One bit of big news is that Rick admitted that events are moving faster than the company anticipated in the consumer arena (ie. he said the same thing about the medical field six months ago and see where we are now! - shipping beta units) and that he can no longer say with assurance that something won't develop in the consumer space this year. He said today that several months ago, he would have had to categorically deny that anything would happen in the consumer space in 2000. No potential partners were revealed by the company although one questioner in the audience raised Qualcomm as a potential partner. One other questioner asked along the lines of what Microvision would be supplying (ie patents/technology, display units, etc.). Rick said that it was still up in the air and that one potential partner discussed allowing MVIS a certain amount of space in the phone to design its display, another would ship the 90% completed phone to MVIS to include the VRD unit then MVIS would ship it back, and a third didn't want MVIS to touch the phone manufacturing process but would have MVIS supply the technology to enable it. After recent conversations with Rick, I am further convinced that the company continues to make progress in developing or partnering into the markets where its product's benefits are obvious and are currently affordable. Though I have scoffed at comparisons to Qualcomm in the past (ie as recently as last week in fact since I don't think MVIS's stock price deserves a multi-billion dollar market cap at this point unlike some others), I like the emphasis the company has placed on owning the core underlying technology that enables its products and how it can leverage them into other fields and income streams. Obewon/Valuation Guy BTW - forgot to mention that either Steve or Rick let drop that most of the early development work for their technology was done at Cal, Univ of WA, and Stanford. I know that several posters have speculated that the MEMS patents were bought from Stanford so I hope this puts this issue to rest somewhat.