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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bythepark who wrote (8415)	9/5/2000 1:15:12 PM
From: Chinacat	Respond to of 10309

Hi Alan, I haven't seen any public information about Wind's "new strategy in Japan", so it would be hard for me to comment. Hence, I will limit my comments to general knowledge and common/popular opinions in Japan. Overall, Kobelco is (and there are others like them) a great company to provide full solutions. Customers in Japan demand a high degree of integration and "readiness" in a product, especally in a complex product. Kobelco offers this kind of value for many of the products they distribute. Some examples of what Kobelco does in the embedded space: Develop device drivers and BSPs Develop/Sell/Resell complementary middleware *Provide support in Japanese This is all stuff which a typical customer in the US probably wouldn't need; or would do himself. However, due to the cultural, language, and other barriers, customers in Japan do appreciate this kind of added value. This is just another component of offering "time to market" tailored to the Japanese customer. Further, they derive security/comfort from buying software from Kobelco, which is a well established and famous "brand". Finally, (this is somewhat of a generalization) Japanese companies tend to be wary of US companies which merge and get acquired at a frantic pace. The risk of having to deal with the changes that come with mergers tends to scare them off from buying off the shelf technology. A Japanese distributor helps to cushion these worries, and very often the distributor is still held accountable to provide a solution, no matter what happens to the US technology provider. I'm not sure how much this helps answer your question, but feel free to let me know. I'll try to answer what I can, within the scope of general knowledge and popular opinions. Cheers! cat