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Technology Stocks : XYBR - Xybernaut -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Rande Is who wrote (2103)3/2/1999 6:40:00 PM
From: Dave Shoe  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 6847
 
I wouldn't give too much weight to the $500 wearable article. It was a rather smiley-faced fable which painted an obvious direction for social computing. For the article to have significant value to me, it needs to infer something about MA-IV sales and backlog figures from December 1998 thru February 1999.

As far as the statement "A company called Xybernaut is working on a $500 wearable..." being a numeric truncation. No way. Xybernaut is not "working on a $5000" item, they "already have" one. And you can bet they are exploring all avenues at cost reduction. In the words of Steve Newman earlier this year, "we intend to drive prices down".

Still, I feel a useful $500 wearable is years away. There is just too much cost in portable computing. This price-point must employ lots of low-power RAM memory for functional voice recognition capacity (voice recognition being a critical feature, in my opinion), a micro disk drive to handle the vast applications overhead, and some sort of built-in internet connectivity which would be central to generating any form of mass consumer interest. An appealing color display would also need to be addressed, and the keyboard function would likely be minimized for practicality. And then there's the need for a low-cost low-power chipset. And the need for profit. Sorry, man. The $500 wearable may be in everyone's future, but not until well after the $2000 wearable blazes a path many months in the future.

The focus of the article was to paint humanity's future, which apparently includes WebTV, satellite networks, cell phones, and "the all-purpose super-gadget", this latter item allowing them to segue through the Xybernaut scenario in short order. You can speculate all day about today's "non run down" in stock price as being influenced by this article, but I'd sooner pick any other recent press release as being equally weighty.

This fluffy article is only to blame for the run-up because it's the most recent cut-and-paste fodder on the message boards. I'd be more inclined to believe that recent phone conversations with XIR are perhaps closing with, "we'll be addressing your concern in the next press release" (I do NOT know this. I'm perfectly content that my email is being IGNORED by Xybernaut. I only SPECULATE that this is a more plausible reason for today's market non-disinterest).

Hey, sooner or later, somebody at Xybernaut has gotta say something.

I am glad to see the warrants have so much life in them. I was expecting them to rebound fairly slowly in 1999 compared to the common. Hmmm, maybe I need to diversify....

Shoe.