chetfinster 13 Aug 2002,
I sold my position on Friday, before the announcement. When there had been no information released concerning securing relative chump change financing of 1 million, I figured that that was a telling point.
I think I'm in the minority here in that I lost less than 2K. I could've stuck it out, but the management of the company wasn't sending out any positive signals about the future, and seems to be presently playing a gamblers hand here in trying to force investors out of the woodwork in an effort to keep the tech away from competitors.
I still believe in the technology, but my suspicions seem to be confirmed by another poster here in stating that On2 doesn't "own" the technology, they're just acting as a rep for the patent holder, so the company, in essence, has no assets besides sales. That's fine for the patent holder, not so fine for the stock holder.
In my opinion I think the company missed more than a few opportunities to promote the technology. I know I made an offer from the pharma company I work at that potentially would have allowed us to release some positive promotional statements out about this technology, but the initiative never went anywhere. May the overture was made too late in the game - I don't know.
I do know that this technology kicks the cr*p out of everything else, and it will be a shame to see Corona win simply because they "own" the market by default as they "own" the operating systems. MPEG4 was never the enemy. M$oft and Corona are the competition. Real would do themselves a favor by acknowledging this fact.
I could never understand why the marriage of Real and On2 never happened. It seems a natural. A delivery system with a very broad base and a codec that can improve the quality while reducing the necessary bandwidth. It was a VERY short honeymoon. I have to believe something happened behind the scenes to sour the relationship. Maybe it had something to do with AOL dumping Real in favor of the FREE On2 codec - who knows.
I still think this might work out, if for no other reason than to isolate the technology. I know if I had the money, and my game had anything to do with creating or delivering content over the internet or wireless, I'd make a move here. That's why I'll be surprised if financing doesn't happen (with a new partner) before the codec patent holder becomes a free agent.
I realize my money isn't where my mouth is right now, but I figure 2K on the minus give me the right to throw in my 2 cents.
AI
