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Technology Stocks : General Magic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dwight martin who wrote (5449)	3/8/1999 12:35:00 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

It backs up the claims of General Magic that ASR is a component type product that can be plugged into a system. This flexibility will allow these companies to offer the best product available. I guess I would rather see Lucent be less flexible, but it's not really important. I went to a panel discussion and Lucent's chief said they were looking to develop "fat sticky" products that would encourage cell phone users to increase their air time. Clearly, they would like to compete against Portico. How they do this is another story. They are probably going to go after the Call Center market first, but having so much strength behind the company, they can probably aim at many markets. I would be surprised to see Lucent develop a NOC service model like GM. They will probably want to make a package and sell it to the WCC's and let them support it. I don't know if this is what the buyers want because the products and markets will be evolving very quickly. That would seem to give GM's model of service an advantage to the end user versus a simpler static product like call waiting, or voice mail. So, I would guess Lucent will come out soon with a basic bullet proof product offering limited function. Then the question will be, does this product have enough function to compete against a full service product like Portico? Clearly, there will be room for both. Probably, the WCC's will buy from Lucent and then hope that users add Portico whenever they need it. I've never understood why we should expect WCC's and RBOC's to take over the marketing of Portico. At best, I should think they would be a good referal service, perhaps putting a stamp of approval on the product. Anyway, it appears that this particular Lucent anouncement is oriented toward developing Call Centers. This again will be a very large market and one where Lucent will do well. They will sell equipment and software to thousands of companies to replace receptionists with Auto Attendants. While this product will employ ASR/IVR technology, I don't think it's wise to get alarmed that it competes with Portico, or even MagicTalk. In the end, this market will be very large and General Magic would be worth a hundred times it's current stock price if they only got 5% market share. GM is geared toward the highend customer, and anyway you cut it, they look like they have an undeniably strong offering that will be a market force for the next couple of years. IMHO Regards, Mark