Becasue some of you may be thinking this, without saying it, or discussing it, and because I like to play devil's advocate at times just to maintain my own patience and sanity ~
Wave used to be the only working security chip that we knew about. We didn't know anything about a TPM 2-years ago. Now everyone touts their own TPM and chipset solution (except NSM) without Wave even being mentioned in the hardware configuration. IMO, Wave was delayed (for a number of reasons) in their depolyment long enough to either give the IP away to everyone else, or get caught up to by everyone else due to these delays. An 18-month head start usually lasts only 18-months by my calendar. Just because Wave and the market fell on hard time, didn't seem to bother R&D in this area.
Now Wave is still pushing services, like they always have. Wave is still saying that they never wanted to be a chip company like they always have. But again, we the investors are not seeing TPM rollout as an 'immediate' pot-of-gold. Rather, we are seeing it as 12-24 month pot-of-gold. It will take that long for TPM adoption to begin to occur in mass. To the pragmatist, that would mean that adoption of Wave's services to any great extent could mirror, but would also likely trail TPM adoption.
To me that means revenues are very minor in beginning 2004, ramping to somewhat impressive the later half of 2004, and then ramping to very impressive in 2005 and beyond. But, to me as devil's advocate, that also means that the behemouths have 12-24 months to again catch up, to put out their own similar and new services. That also means that over that period you'll likely hear about HPs services, and IBM's services.
I ask myself all of the time - If Wave has security services now, that would benefit every TPM user, why aren't all of the behemouths including it in their TPM PCs automatically now? Why are some offering it as a downloadable option? Why are others (i.e. HP) not offering it yet at all? Is it because it's not their core business, and they're not in business to push other people's products? Perhaps. Could it be because they too expect to develop similar services in the near future? Perhaps.
Yes - these are tough questions to answer. And, it's easy for me too to say to myself ~ Tampa, you either believe or you don't. But, while I do believe, I'm also growing a little restless trying to convince myself over and over that it's Mr. Softee NDAs that are keeping me from knowing the truth. That when Mr. Softee finally decides to come out of the closet, whenever that is, we'll finally see our expectations realized.
Hence my ramblings. I'm not looking for a conclusion, or an outcome. I'm not looking for convincing, or an argument. I continue (as I said previously) to quietly accumulate shares in anticipation of my expectations. just like many of you. But these thoughts cross my mind too once in a while. So, I just thought I'd share them.
T123
