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Santa Barbara Broker

01/28/08 2:04 PM

#18004 RE: Plat00nSarge #17993

Platoonsarge: I too share some of your concerns about the remaining market for voice recognition in the automobile industry. Currently there are more than 50 recognized companies contributing VR componentry, software and background noise suppresion tech to all of the automobile manufacturers in the world. I know of no automobile manufacturer who does not have a minimum five year history with two to three of these companies. Below is a partial list:

Chrysler, Scansoft

Ford, Volvo, Land Rover, Microsoft SYNC (Nuance)

GM, General Magic, OnStar (in house)

Toyota, Lexus, VoiceBox (Viavoice) (VB teamed with Johnson Controls)

Nissan, Infiniti, Confero, Asahi Kasei

Honda, Acura IBM

Mercedes, Linguatronic, Siemens, Becker

BMW, Mini, Nuance, Andrea Electronics, Siemens

Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, Becker, Magneti-Marelli, Siemens, Blaupunkt, Böhme Datentechnik

Fiat, Xillinx, SiRF, Samsung

Avoca Semiconductor, LyricFind, Xilinx, Samsung, SiRF, Magneti-Marelli, ScanSoft, Fonix, Elan Informatique, Asahi Kasei, Toshiba, Triamp Tech, LLC and Hitachi are some of the associated companies who have tied up most of the rest of the market directly or working conjointly with Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Johnson Controls, Nuance, Becker or some of the above mentioned players providing every auto manufacturer in the world with some element of or an entire package of VR solutions. No where outside of their own statements, can I find a reference to One Voice where an automobile manufacturer is mentioned. It is disheartening but I fear there will never be an association between One Voice and an in auto VR system. At least nothing that will be of any substance. They are far too late to this game which began R&D in 1998 and installation of rudimentary VR systems in 2000/2001. In addition, from the amount I understand surrounding the tech, One Voice VR does not parse well with MMSE (minimum mean-square error) algorithms adopted to suppress false/inaccurate commands resultant of the more diverse and much louder background noise in a moving automobile environment (windows down, road noise, cabin conversation, baby crying, etc). It would seem that OV software would have to adapt a few critical program elements to overcome this. Why a manufacturer would wait on this while proven four mic systems/software currently exist and are sync'd with many major system interfaces in use would be puzzling at best.

Our hopes will probably need to rest on MV apps associated with Telnor/Telmex and MNTL for the kind of revenue that will overcome the current level of dilution and debt that threatens to destroy the company. I am just hopeful that that particular source of revenue presents itself before management considers increasing the amount of stock any further. I don't know if One Voice could survive long term as a going enterprise with more dilution.