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Technology Stocks : Racom Systems (RCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gutterball who wrote (299)	9/9/1998 11:36:00 PM
From: Marty Lee	Respond to of 468

Hi Dan! RE: ST Microelectronics and Siemens Fighting Hard for Market Leader Position In Smart Card ICs Market... Bully for them. They have to do about 3000 times the business too than does RCOM to return another penny on the share. "According to strategic new research conducted by Frost & Sullivan frost.com, Worldwide Smart Card ICs Market, the smart card ICs market is pacing at a CAGR of less than 10 percent until the year 2000, a significant change from the 20 percent and higher growth rates experienced in earlier years." Frost and Sullivan do not have one person with a degree in economics working for them who would dare take their "strategic research" to the dept. of economics at George Mason University and say, "Hey! Look at what we found out! Give us an A plus for our methodology here!" "In some cases, IC manufacturers have met only 50 percent of their budget." Familiar with the concept of "market rotation?" Wanna bet that these IC makers don't make a comeback within the next 12 months? You think Atmel is going to remain at 8 bucks a share? "The total market share breakdown for the smart card ICs industry is as follows: Blaw Blaw Blaw... Question: Can F&S give us an objective definition of "total market share" where a "market" AND ITS TECHNOLOGIES have yet to be tapped? If they can, I'd love to hear it! All they said was, "These guys sell more of the same shit than these other guys so they have more share of the CURRENT demand." wHO'S gOT THE GREATER shARE oF CONTACtLESS sMARTy cArdS? If demand doesn't remain the same (and there's a good likelihood it won't) Siemens and ST Micro could lose out big time.. That's why they're "FIGHTING" so hard; no doubt over double martini's. Who the hell cares about these two, big fat companies anyway? We all were attracted to RCOM because they are, indeed, a small co. with a lot of service potential in a nascent market. RCOM doesn't need a large market share to make its investors quite happy; as they have a lot fewer shares outstanding. The best way to compete with the big boys is "don't." Find Out what the slugs are overlooking and pick up your trail there. RCOM CAN DO IT! In such a wide open field, it's only a matter of will power and peddling your ass. I do hope that I get a lot of flak for all this. Maybe even a three or four day suspension! <grin to P.P.> Just trying to help/hype.. Marty

To: Gutterball who wrote (299)	9/10/1998 4:47:00 PM
From: Gutterball	Respond to of 468

Frost & Sullivan Report Names Siemens Leader in Worldwide Smart Card IC Sales MUNICH, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 1998--Frost & Sullivan has named Siemens the leader in smart card IC sales worldwide in 1997. The high-tech market research firm's ''Worldwide Smart Card ICs Market'' report states that Siemens accounted for some 43 percent of smart card IC market last year. Ulrich Hamann, president of the Security and Chip Card IC division at Siemens Semiconductors, Munich, Germany, said that he agreed with the Frost & Sullivan report that the market has slowed to a virtual crawl over the past year. ''But the turnaround may come sooner than we had expected,'' he noted. Siemens expects that the smart card IC sales will begin to accelerate before the end of 1998 and that overall market growth could return to the 20 to 25 percent range in 1999. ''We are already witnessing an overall increase in demand in the market due to new projects on the horizon. We predict strong growth worldwide in demand in SIM cards for GSM phones, in banking and electronic commerce, in electronic signature and in government identification cards.'' Siemens also expects to see a quick transition to high-end microcontroller cards, including 16- and even 32-Kbyte cards. ''The new controllers will allow card suppliers to provide multi-functional cards, such as combination purse, debit/credit and transit,'' Hamann said. ''But the real value of these high-end chips lies in their ability to provide sophisticated security features that can be written in popular, open software platforms.''