Gary Kaltbaum is an investor. He runs a fund. He has a radio show, and has a website -- and you can find him on Twitter. On this past Friday's show Gary mentioned that he's going to dedicate time every week to "finding the next big mobile app" If you can find the next big mobile App, you can get in front of Pokemon Go, or Facebook, or Linkedin. I thought I'd try to give him a hand finding the next big thing. Gary's Website * Gary's Twitter Feed * Friday's Show (7/22/16) There are many next big applications that are on the horizon, but figuring out which one of them is really going to be a hit is kind of difficult. (Who could have predicted Angry Birds, or Candy Crush or Pokemon Go?) A way to get that mobile content on a big screen? Without having to lug a big screen around with you? That's golden. Throw in a hefty dose of Augmented Reality IP & 3D laser scanning technology for good measure, you could have a winner. Microvision is in the early stages of generating revenue -- but it's coming -- and they have their technology embedded in a phone that stockholders have seen and watched in action -- it works. It has been very frustrating for shareholders for a LONG time, but mass production has begun. Why Microvision? Because this: The picture below is being projected with Micrcvsion's projector... the phone that is the source (Samsung S4 is at the bottom of the picture... ) BIG screen from a small device.
And in a phone below.
Sony is producing components with their tech. SONY Laser Projector Module Page Foxconn just bought Sharp -- which is using their tech.
Disney may well be in the fold as well. In my opinion we're a single announcement away from a crazy rise. Check it out. Less risk than trying to play the next software fad.
Masayoshi Son has been busy for a long time in tech, but really got some attention when going for ARM holdings this week. Worth digging around about him. It seems to me that if there ever were a guy who would enthusiastically jump into Microvision, it would be this guy. He's a risk-taker in risk-averse Japan & Risk averse big business. He's of Korean ancestry in Japan. This is quite significant in Japan - even though most outside of Japan don't realize it. He's not really on the inside in Japan -- but not really on the outside -- and the restraining parts of the Japanese culture aren't restraining him. (I'm sure I'll get a note correcting this if I've misstated any of this. DF?) He understands Japan and the "weird" in Japan. Check out the ad. What is here is a guy who knows capital. A guy who is willing to risk -- and sometimes lose - which is really important. If it's a sure thing, there isn't any risk, but precious little upside as well. We also have a guy who studies the future and gets it right. Microvision is a significant part of the future of portable computing, entertainment & the internet of things. Those industries have a huge problem - getting large displays from small devices -- and Microvision is the answer to that problem. From Financial Times
Critically, say analysts, Mr Son embraces risk with skin in the game: a 19.2 per cent stake in SoftBank that is both stick and carrot to his bravura dealmaking. By contrast, the rest of corporate Japan — increasingly led by a generation of salaryman chief executives who hold minuscule quantities of stock and have risen to their positions by avoiding risk wherever possible — does not do very much of that.
Some larger, cash-rich Japanese companies, following pressure from shareholders, have started to become more proactive in looking abroad for long-term growth and a higher return on equity. They logged a record ¥10tn of outbound M&A deals in 2015. Even so, it was an improvement rather than an outright transformation. Those outbound deals were fairly conservative, led by the insurance and banking sectors looking for large, bolt-on businesses in dependable, developed parts of the world. The scale of the deals — modest by global standards — demonstrated a reluctance on the part of acquirers fundamentally to reshape themselves.
While companies such as Intel Corp. design and manufacture chips, ARM is strictly a designer. It charges licensing fees and per-chip royalties to other companies that use its schematics. Customers such as Apple Inc., Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics Co. began flocking in the past decade to ARM-based chips because they drew less power than competing chips from the likes of Intel, which made high-performance but energy-guzzling processors.
"A fresh acquisition is not what the market wants from SoftBank," said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Asset Management.
"It's Mr. Son's style to keep expanding, but isn't he stretching too much?"
Investors fret the purchase of ARM, Japan's largest ever outbound deal, may be too much for SoftBank, still in the throes of turning around U.S. carrier Sprint <S.N> and tackling a $112 billion debt pile.
Others take the longer view.
"There is little synergy with SoftBank's existing businesses, but it makes sense if we look at ARM's future potential," said Tomoaki Kawasaki, senior analyst at IwaiCosmo Securities Co.
"Mr. Son is prioritizing investment for the future over shoring up the balance sheet. It's very Mr. Son-like."
A self-made entrepreneur whom one investment banker described as thinking "in decades", Son, of Korean descent, has long been something of an outsider in corporate Japan.
He wears the somber suits of Japan's salarymen but is an outspoken sometimes outrageous voice, with a celebrity status and 2.5 million followers on Twitter.
Son said he sealed the deal in just two weeks with a handful of advisers. These include Jeffrey Sine, co-founder of niche U.S. merchant bank Raine, who has advised Son for years.
Japan’s favorite TV ad series features a family who sit around bickering and occasionally mentioning the merits of the tariffs offered by mobile network SoftBank.
So far, so ordinary. Mobile operators love to feature regular people and trumpet the joy of communication with bland phrases about being ‘better connected’ and having a ‘world that revolves around you’.
But in the Softbank commercials, the grown up Japanese daughter has a brother who is apparently an American black man. And their father is, well, a white dog.
No one in the ads ever remarks on the weirdness of this.
It’s all very droll, slightly weird and joyfully eccentric.
And wildly popular. Indeed, Japan’s CM Research Center, which conducts TV ad recall surveys says SoftBank’s ‘Otosan’ ads (Otosan is Japanese for father) have topped most of its polls for the last five years — and earned the firm’s ‘Brand of the Year’ prize every year from 2007 to 2011.
***
Son loved to buy and sell, throwing money into 600 technology companies, including GeoCities, Ziff-Davis Publishing and the Comdex computer show. Some of these bets went disastrously wrong, such as Kingston Technologies, which lost Softbank $1 billion.
Others did better.
Ziff-Davis’s chief executive, Eric Hippeau, introduced Son to a struggling small company called Yahoo, which wanted $5 million to develop its search engine tech. Famously, Masayoshi Son offered $100 million. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang replied that they didn’t need that much. To which Son countered: “Everyone needs $100 million.”
Thus, Softbank owned more than one-third of Yahoo when it went public in April 1996.
And Masayoshi Son was similarly prescient about Alibaba, offering a big sum to its CEO Jack Ma when he hadn’t even asked for it. As a result, Softbank got a third of Alibaba – a stake worth $75bn on the day the Chinese giant IPOd last month.
SoftBank’s $20 million investment in Alibaba back in 2000 probably ranks as one of the greatest ever.
Occasionally it's time to review the big picture. Traffic to this blog is up in a very interesting way, and there are new countries of note on the traffic radar. When it comes down to it, most of what is posted about Microvision is noise. I end up in a lot of discussions about Microvision with friends and other investors, and I find myself often backing up to the big picture. Too much focus on details leads to giving details more importance than they deserve.
The BIG Picture -- all you need to know
Most of the people on earth are carrying smartphones and they are getting increasingly powerful. -- they can deliver more data than can be viewed on the small screen that fits in the pocket.
Everyone who has a smart phone would like the physical size of it to be smaller
Everyone who has a smart phone would like the screen to be bigger
Where are we now?
PicoP is embeddable in a usable smart phone as demonstrated by Qualper.
Many stockholders have now seen and held this.
The Qualper phone is a quick sale.
There is no way that the Qualper solution isn't visible to large OEMS.
There are no impediments to mass production.
Brighter and smaller is in the works.
Only a tiny number of people in the world are aware of PicoP
Huge investing opportunity
Look how fast Pokemon Go went from (apparently) zero to madness.
Potential Market:
Last year 1,400,000,000 smartphones were sold world wide.
1% penetration of that market would be 14,000,000 unit sales.
Smartphones are only part of the potential for MicroVision -- this ignores
Signage
Embedded in Tablet Computers
Pocket computers
Auto
Augmented Reality
3D laser scanning
Many people who own this stock are FULLY invested -- which results in a lack of upward pressure. Some of us have more invested than "reasonable" people would. I am among those.
