This is a point of speculation, but it seems it may relate to this discussion point. If you were an OEM and you were hopeful of selling into what we think is an emerging trend towards series production, would you really want to promote Printrite? As I think I understood John Rice to say on yesterday's call -- at this point it's up to the end user, who's purchasing the printer/s from the OEM to request in-situ monitoring as an add-on.
But what I didn't hear Rice go into is an explanation of why this might be so. I'm speculating that the reason, the why so?, may be that to introduce the notion that your printers may require or even benefit from quality assurance monitoring... Hmmm... I don't know...If you're OEM A and OEM B,C,D, etc are not currently pitching monitoring from a 3rd party as an add on, and you're trying to impress with the capabilities of your printers in order to make the most sales at the best price you can, would you really want to introduce the idea of another product, a monitoring product being necessary or even helpful, and then the customer figures they have to spend that much more money, and if OEMs B and C, etc aren't pitching the same monitoring assurance add-on well then, from the standpoint of the end user customer maybe these other OEM's have more confidence in their printers w/o monitoring software.
At least from the add'l acquisition cost boost standpoint it would seem like OEM's would have reservations... Not reservations about selling PrintRite as an add on if requested, but to pitch it while they are trying to pitch their own machines in the first instance.
Perhaps this is the reason that endusers need to be the primary focus as customers at this point.
Let me add that I'm not considering this a negative factor exactly, certainly not in the longer term...I do think that it may be an explanation though as a contributing factor to the lack of sales with PrintRite thus far. Ultimately, if PrintRite continues to prove itself, it won't matter whether the OEMs are pitching it themselves. Furthermore, once Printrite is being utilized for series production and purchased through any OEM, assuming this happens, they may all come to be be pitching it.
It does make sense to me, what Rice is saying though, in view of these points, that the primary targets at this point in time ought to be the co's I believe they are now focusing upon --- the endusers who are already beginning to use AM printers for series manufacturing purposes.
AI
