SCKT: NCR Silver-- Socket scanner---Office Depot deployment
NCR intends to become an 800lb gorilla in the mushrooming use of tablets for cash registers for businesses. They use the iPad now and will have Android tablets also early next year. From their investor presentation earlier this year, they aspire to sell 10K systems this year, 120K next, 360K the year after. That tells you the growth here.
Today they had their conference call. They sold several hundred systems in the 3rd Q as they were only just starting to ramp up. They continued to build the infrastructure for growth. They now have 2600 sales reps contracted and another 7800 in the pipeline.
An exciting avenue of growth is that they are going to put the NCR Silver system on on the shelves on a "prominent endcap" at over 1000 office retailers next month (I'm assuming it's Office Depot since they have 1100 stores). I wouldn't be surprised to see it at Staples and Costco soon (NCR mentioned Costco in an earlier conference as a possibility).
Socket mobile provides the only barcode scanner for the NCR Silver hardware package. It will be interesting to see if the scanner shows up on the shelves also (I wrote the CFO and he said "can't really comment" but also "don't be surprised if the answer to my question became public knowledge soon")
Next year: 120K systems sold. Even if only 1/3 buy a barcode scanner (very helpful during checkout with the iPad at the sales counter), that's a lot of money for small company like Socket (only 5 million shares outstanding now, 7M if fully diluted by options and warrants). This is only one customer. Socket now has over 160 partners (very large and lots of small ones) who's software is designed to use with the scanners. Remember--these partners spend all the advertising and marketing money, Socket just needs to be a good supplier and ship product!
Also an interesting note: Socket's scanners are the choice to use by a $4.8B company. They beat out Motorola's tablet scanner. It tells you that they are good.
Somo side of the business: I know more here. Contact me if you'd like to hear the positive things happening here.
