RM: Your analysis of the situation is interesting. I'm going to interpret some things based on extrapolation and opinion
a) I don't believe it would make sense for EFFC to compete against the companies that have billions of dollars to develop this. This would make bad business sense. Most of the companies in this playing field, LIKELY, have to have this solution 100% accurate to put it into production in their 'line of business'. Take BMW/Mercedes/etc for example... There is no way they would ever deploy this to end users without approval from whatever silly regulatory body needs to approve it (if it does), and no chance of recall. Don't things take 5 years to make it to people in this space? At least? (that is, unless you buy the $200,000 car).
b) I believe it makes sense for EFFC to work with small OEM's and small-medium sized companies because they have a product (at what appears to be a reasonable price) that can be consumed by any size company
c) Because the company is small, they are likely 'Easy' to do a contract with. Dealing with a large company, trying to put together a legal agreement to buy a product such as this, would involved dealing with the corporate legal team - maybe not even through a LARGE oem. Dealing with EFFC, you likely can deal with people directly at the company... small companies like this I bet.
d) EFFC has a product NOW(ish). Other companies (per A above) likely aren't shipping a complete solution today. They have bits and pieces and not a complete solution. Also, if other companies find that EFFC's monitoring environment is "best of breed", they might find they can integrate their hardware device into EFFC's monitoring profile and ultimately EFFC benefits from that. Ultimately, they turn into the 'operating system' for Trucks where disparate GPS/etc hardware sends CDMA/3G signals back to a home base. At the end of the day, an open standard for use of their system - or API based access would be an awesome thing for them to have. HARDWARE is cheap and continues to get cheaper. Software costs per-seat licensing AND per-month monitoring. I pay a company $20 a month to monitor my personal home security system - Companies can now pay a monthly fee for better piece of mind. :)
Anyway, thanks for the thoughtful criticism - the business model of EFFC needs to be such that your comments/concerns either are handled, or, the footprint of the entire trucking industry is such that a 'small fish' like EFFC can play without even touching the radar of someone big... BUT, if EFFC gets enough foothold in the small-business market, and international market... They quickly become an acquisition target.
