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

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (11525)	5/29/1999 10:23:00 AM
From: Ray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

Zeev, re Iridium's failure (so far). It seems to me that the Iridium venture's money problems stem from low product acceptance - due to (a) a large, heavy phone, (b) high costs for both the phone and the satellite service, and (c) not enough people who really need total area coverage. If it were not for these problems, the product would be a hit and additional money would be easily available. VLNC apparently already has quite substantial production capacity, even with only one-shift operation. If the batteries have rapid acceptance, I would not expect them to be much hampered by limited funds or limited capacity.

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (11525)	5/29/1999 6:31:00 PM
From: Eli74	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27311

If I may comment Zeev, in my opinion, the failure of Iridium (and I assume you're referring to the satellite communications venture in which Motorala has a 20% stake)is due to something fairly simple. There haven't been a helluva of lot of people that have been willing to pay $3,000 for a telephone that is the size and weight of a brick, and that you have to pay $8/minute to talk on, and that you can't use indoors. While I don't know a whole lot about it, I think the most important thing is that they spent billions developing a product that no one wants to use. Kinda reminds me of the Edsel. The capital structure of Iridium, in the long run, doesn't mean diddly.