Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (4989)	1/23/2001 9:52:12 AM
From: a.m. fisher	Respond to of 57684

Action Alert: OpenWave A star is born and a star sets, all in the same cohort, all on the same day. Yesterday Don Listwin showed what OpenWave (OPWV:Nasdaq - news - boards) (the combo of Software.com and Phone.com) can do. It delivered huge earnings (yes, you read that right: a dot-com with earnings) and fabulous revenue guidance. And, get this, it raised the bar going forward, by about $60 million in revenue. Did anyone else do that? And yesterday, Naveen Jain had to come back to pick up the pieces of Infospace (INSP:Nasdaq - news - boards), a company that seems to be reeling, just reeling. Its CEO, the popular and loved Arun Sarin, is out. Its CFO, the steady Rand Rosenberg, stepped down. The most puzzling, though, was the departure of Russell Horowitz, the young president, who joined forces with Naveen just a few months ago when Infospace bought Go2Net. That acquisition now looks very questionable. Why lump these two together? Both were portfolio managers favorite ways to play wireless and the Internet during the heyday of 2000. Subsequently, both stocks got socked, and the blood from these two filled the Nasdaq streets. Now, OpenWave, which provides Internet-based communications infrastucture software and applications for communications companies worldwide, will become the only "must-own" in the group. (Sycophant alert: I don't think I heard as many "wow-wees" and "congratulations" chirps on a conference call since the early days of Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq - news - boards), where Don used to work.) And Infospace, which also provides wireless companies with infrastructure, struggles with realignment of management and tries to play catch-up in the fastest moving industry on earth. (Hope you were able to use Gene Marcial's incredibly poorly timed hype of Infospace in last week's Business Week to blow out of this stock before disaster hit. What an embarrassment that column remains.)Confused about what OpenWave does? Go to its site, as it is simple and friendly and will explain how this company may be THE play for wireless going forward. Oh, and as a personal aside, I have always been a huge Don Listwin fan. He is the only executive in this country that has come close to intimidating me in an interview. He's raw power and doesn't like to lose. I want guys like that on my team. I think the rumors about Oracle (ORCL:Nasdaq - news - boards) having some problems were just rumors to get the stock down. That will be hard to do, according to my sources, who indicate business remains robust.