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

To: John Madarasz who wrote (6268)	6/5/1999 3:49:00 AM
From: pubcrawl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

Hi folks, I'm new to the Board. Though I've been following the discussions for a while and appreciate the informed opinions of the participants. Here's an article from the WSJ of June 3, which perhaps shows the future of information delivery via phones. Simple information delivery via voice to me is a very natural progression which I think there's a huge consumer need for. For example, I'd like to get closing stock prices delivered to me in the morning when I'm commuting to work (I live in the FarEast and the US markets close at about 4am my time). And if the information provider adds to that simple transaction technology which allows me to act on that information (eg., a buy/sell decision) via voice, I'd gladly pay a premium for that service. Having been a long time investor in GMGC, I have faith in their technology. I do however feel that the market needs simple products like what I described above (or GMGC's ebay demo for example) at this stage rather than a complex product like Portico which I personally do not see a huge market for. I continue to hold on to GMGC because I think we'll see this coming (how else will they utilise the 500,000 NOC, certainly not with Portico). The only concern I have is when I see announcements like the attached Yahoo announcement without GMGC. I think GMGC should be driving such applications. Any thoughts/comments? Sprint and Yahoo! Plan to Offer Web Content Via Cellular Phones By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter NEW YORK -- Sprint Corp.'s wireless-phone unit will form a partnership with Yahoo! Inc. to deliver Web content to its cellular-phone customers. Yahoo! Looks to Broaden Its Base With Deals Company Profile: Yahoo! Sprint's cell-phone users will be able to create a customized data service from Yahoo's Web site, choosing features such as stock quotes, news and weather, that will be forwarded to their phones. Users also will be able to create and reply to e-mail from their phones. The companies expect to make the services available in the fourth quarter. Pricing for the service hasn't yet been determined. "What this says loud and clear to customers is that wireless is an access point for the Internet," said Andrew Sukawaty, chief executive of Sprint's highflying wireless division. Sprint has more than three million wireless subscribers.

To: John Madarasz who wrote (6268)	6/6/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10081

<Management has repeatedly said over and over not to expect too much until AFTER the second half of the year. They have said over and over we expect real revenues in and after July 1999. genmagic.com The only disappointing behavior I've seen this year has been from overanxious and unrealistic investors who refuse to accept the company's publicly stated business plan. Because of this many have fallen for every market making ruse in the book, and ended up disappointed time and again.> Honestly John, I think we were led to believe something more could've developed by now. Not necessarily billions of dollars worth of revenues, but something a little more substantial than what we've seen. I was frankly shocked by the revenues they've reported. I believed the advertising campaign and sales through resellers must have produced more than this and it is a cause of great concern. So, I can understand why people have deluded themselves. I agree that management has tried to put the brakes on investor expectations, but without putting a finger on a date when this started, I believe it started around the beginning of year. I think, prior to last year's annual meeting, we were led to believe carriers would have progressed farther than they have today. Obviously carrier trials have gone slower than they expected. Why? Could be many factors. Could be the nature of the carrier beast. Could be mergers? Could be the product is/was not ready? Could be the product conflicts with existing products and they don't know how to develop a marketing angle that doesn't eat into existing revenues? Could be they're waiting for another product from another company? I don't know. I can only speculate, which isn't really very useful. The fact is General Magic doesn't seem to be able to sell Portico on their own. That disappoints me. Now, we have BellSouth and Qwest, and something coming from Wireless Knowledge. It was interesting to see them change horses in mid stream when they announced the Quicken.com deal. At that time, they said Portico trials with the wireless phone companies were going slower than expected and they would be moving more aggressively to Internet deals. Actually, I'm very pleased to see the BellSouth announcement. The Internet deals are confusing. It is not clear how they will make money from them. Anyway, you're correct to say that some people are not patient enough to see this thing through. I'm still hopeful and reasonably patient. Regards, Mark