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Technology Stocks : THREE FIVE SYSTEM (TFS) - up from here? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Franklin M. Humphreys who wrote (780)	1/20/1998 12:21:00 PM
From: Jim Armstrong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3247

I can empathise with the challenge of trying to sort this stuff out in a timely and meaningful way. The technologies are fluid, and are rather arcane. And, most of the companies who develop them tend not to find it in their best interest (their perspective) to be completely transparent about what they're doing. Whatever head-in-the-sand impression you might have gathered from my posting was I'm afraid an artifact of my writing skills, not a reflection of my assesment TFS' technology vigilance. WRT TFS, there are folks who have done the start-up thing, taking a new display technology from the lab, through productization, and into successful manufacture and marketing (different from TFS' main display technology). And there's a former manager of advanced display technology development in another major's corporate research center. There are some pretty savvy folks there who are quite capable of keeping teir company from being blind-sided. It might not be obvious, but this new TFS LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology, though based in part on LC technology, is still quite a techno-jump. Truthfully, keeping track of the new technologies isn't usually much of a challenge. As a technologist, you go to the the right conferences, and work the personal technology network. That's even fun!! Where it gets difficult is deciding at what point a given technology is of relevance (threat or opportunity), and deciding AS A COMPANY how to respond. Too early and you can waste a lot of money on the low end of the learning curve. Too late and you may miss important intellectual properties or critical alliances. No matter how good you are, the timing is still a bit of a crap shoot! Once in a while, you get surprised a little by a new technology wrinkle, but OLED work has been underway for maybe 12 years. You can be sure that TFS is actively tracking the OLED technology because of the increased attention it is receiving. For my part, I'm pretty sure that it's still too immature to fit into TFS' volume production paradigm (IMHO as always), or represent much of a near-term threat to them. But, off course, TFS may be thinking otherwise!! Who knows? In one scenario, they can simply use the technology if it hits big and suddenly! -- JimA