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Technology Stocks : Fonix:Voice Recognition Product (FONX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Cox who wrote (1853)	4/16/1998 12:12:00 PM
From: Dr. Bob	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3347

Parx, Yes, I have discounted the possibility that fonix has "the bomb". I have not totally ruled it out, but I am unwilling to invest any money based on that very small possibility. As I have pointed out before, fonix is not the only company with neural-network based ASR, and their NN competition is already on the market, so your statement that "there is currently no competitive threat from any other quoted company" is simply incorrect. Further, as even fonix has pointed out, NN are more likely to supplement than supplant conventional (HMM-based) ASR, so the statement that all current ASR products will be replaced by NN in a few years is a leap that even fonix management has not taken. "the level of superiority of the fonix tech" is still a supposition based on biased observers. Not a single unbiased observer (i.e., without a financial interest in seeing fonix succeed), to my knowledge, has compared fonix's technology with LHSPF/IBM/Dragon or with the other NN players, and called it superior. The statement from Siemens is exactly what you'd expect, under the circumstances, but even they have only committed a few million, and only to answering machines. Balance this with a deafening silence from all the other Fortune 100 companies who have chosen not to license this "superior" technology. Can't be because fonix wants too much for it - any one of them could have easily afforded the same deal Siemens got. And this is the fact I can't get away from - fonix management obviously expected, and led investors to expect, that they would sign big deals with big companies long before this. At this point, there is no other explanation except that most of those big companies decided this wasn't such hot technology after all, or that fonix wasn't a company they wanted to partner with. Meanwhile, LHSPF signed 200 partnership agreements, most with revenues attached, compared to only one revenue-producing agreement for fonix, so it's not like the competition is standing still. By the way, I was never on the MF board, so I didn't leave it - just quit being an active participant in this one, so I could focus a little more on some (IMO) better opportunities. As I told Marc, in a private note, fonix could be twice as high or half what it is now in a year or two, I don't know which, but LHSPF will be up 150%. Since the time of that note (a month or so ago), fonix has traded sideways, and LHSPF is up 25%. I'm not advocating putting money in LHSPF at this level, but so far, from the time I left fonix for LHSPF, it's down 25%, and LHSPF is up 400% - and nothing has changed in the fundamental picture, IMO. Fonix got the Siemens contract, but only one work agreement has been signed so far. Fonix got AcuVoice, but I haven't seen a single analysis to determine whether that will be accretive to earnings. LHSPF is in the hands of momentum players and may correct substantially from where it is, but its future still looks extremely bright, whereas fonix's is still quite foggy. Anyway, I enjoy renewing old acquaintances - if you get a chance to pick up a little LHSPF on a correction when momentum players leave, take it - just in case fonix's bomb blows up before it ever gets out of the factory! Bob