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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Larry Brubaker who wrote (2477)	3/22/1998 5:29:00 PM
From: Tickertype	Respond to of 27311

Here's something I caught on the AOL news yesterday. This development could possibly reduce the need for worrying about the last few % of extra charge on batteries in all kinds of applications. All the more reason for Valence to get production going a.s.a.p. Special to ABCNEWS.com Let's say you're noodling around on the MIT Web site and come across the surprising discovery that the CD and CD-ROM technology were invented in the mid-1960s by an American scientist named James Russell. And let's say the first question that pops into your mind is, "What has Russell done for me lately?" The answer is not, on reflection, surprising-but it is intriguing. In 1990, Russell set up shop in the Seattle suburbs and began working on a new kind of data storage, now called OROM, for Optical Read-Only Memory. OROM stores data holographically-in miniature plastic optical systems about half the size of a business card-and reads the data by shining tiny LEDs through the OROM lenses. Each card stores 128 mb of data, and since they slip into a card reader with no moving parts, as there are in disk drives, reading the data uses virtually no power. The Brains and Bucks Roll In. It has proven rather easy for Russell to sign up a management and technical team and round up money. (For some reason, having invented the CD-ROM gives him credibility with investors.) Microsoft, Polaris Venture Partners, Britannia Ltd. and other investors recently ponied up $9.5 million to productize Russell's invention and get it to the market by mid-1999. Russell also talked former Hewlett-Packard general manager (and former Tektronix VP) Fred L. Hanson into becoming president and CEO of his company, ioptics-or Information Optics. ÿÿ The market for OROM storage promises to be huge: everything, in Hanson's words, "from embedded computing devices-things like toasters with chips in them, which sell around 100 million units per year-to point-of-sale devices, industrial controls, instruments, GPS navigators, handheld games, portable entertainment devices, handheld PC's." He envisions the day when a company with a large sales force can update presentations or inventory on OROM chips, send them out in the field, and have salespeople plug the cards into the palmtop computers they use for filling orders or doing updated PowerPoint presentations. Portable CD and tape players can be replaced by OROM-reading devices, making them immune (since OROM has no moving parts) to the jostling that comes with walking, running or jumping around. Doin' it Right the Second Time 'Round. But where OROM is likely to make the biggest difference to you and me is in the handheld and laptop computer markets, where growth has been slowed in part by the high cost and high power consumption of memory-storage devices. Handheld computers like the PalmPilot use MROM or flash memory, which run in the dollars-per-megabyte price range, while OROM will cost approximately two cents per megabyte. And the weight and power consumption of laptops can be reduced by anywhere from 20 percent to 80 percent by transferring operating-system and interface data from the hard drive, where it comprises nearly 40 percent of the data stored on the drive, to OROM cards. Eliminating the need for hard drives to store read-only memory allows manufacturers to install far smaller and lighter and less power-hungry drives in laptops, driving down their cost and driving up their efficiency. OROM is likely to make an even bigger difference to the Sonys of the world, who have made billions off of CD players. I visited ioptics twice, hoping to meet Russell, but was turned away the first time and told he was out of town the second. One of his engineers, though, noted that Russell never earned any money off of his CD-ROM patents. (It is axiomatic in the software and computing hardware worlds that businesspeople always figure out a way to shoot the inventor.) "He's doing things right this time around," the engineer said admiringly. Then he pointed out that OROM would someday eliminate the need for CD-ROM storage. Revenge, I thought, is weet-especially when it takes 30 years or so to exact it. - T -

To: Larry Brubaker who wrote (2477)	3/22/1998 8:16:00 PM
From: DKR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Thanks for the complete article...I am not troubled by Mr. Clark's statement, dismissing design flexibility as no big deal is a bizarre, perhaps ignorant, comment. He also follows by saying that there are "few other advantages". I'll gladly take a battery with greater design flexibility to the OEM, and just one other advantage like maybe longer life, all the way to Palm Springs. Japan, which currently controls the li-ion market is "feverishly pursuing plastic technology". WHY? I have been accused of being an optimist before, but this article validates the technology if not Valence specifically...

To: Larry Brubaker who wrote (2477)	3/23/1998 8:51:00 PM
From: wm sharp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Thanks for the link to the full article. Seems fairly lightweight, though the writers may well have done much more research and it was just edited down to essentially space filler utility. Unfortunate. I think the LITH press release gives investors more substance about the viability of the general technology and OEM interest in same. I and other investors I've spoken with noted that the quote from Compaq in the Business Week piece came from one of their marketing people - someone who can be relied upon to defend the current product line, particularly if it's the competition who has implemented the newer technology. Fred posted at some point last year that Compaq had actually published their own study delineating the benefits of polymer in areas such as weight and volume. The substance of both press items suggests that any negative knee-jerk reaction in today's VLNC and ULBI trading could very well prove to be a buying opportunity. I'm willing to cheer all three companies on to success, and am pleased that the article at least focused to some extent on the U.S. pioneering of the technology. (The Japan and Malaysia references were nebulous.) I won't forget Valence's statements that, at full production, they'd be happy to capture a small percentage of the huge market for portable rechargeables. For investment, I chose Valence over the other two because I feel, at today's prices, we're getting significantly more R&D history, patents, and production capacity for each dollar invested.