China Scrambles to stem manufacturing exodus as 50 companies leave

I had been curious that this could be an issue. During the ASM trade tensions with China was an issue mentioned and discussed.

This is one possibility of why a 1 quarter delay could be extended. 

One of the many things to watch, I see it as a long-term positive, short term disruptive event.

Thanks Mike

Asia.nikkei.com


TOKYO/SHANGHAI -- China is racing to keep foreign enterprises in-country, dangling special benefits so that the advantages of staying outweigh the heavy tariffs imposed by the U.S.

A year into the trade war with Washington, more than 50 global companies, including Apple and Nintendo, have announced or are considering plans to move production out of China, Nikkei research has found.

And not just foreign companies. Chinese manufacturers, as well as those from the U.S., Japan and Taiwan, are part of the drain, including makers of personal computers, smartphones and other electronics.

Financial Times
Foxconn will start mass production of displays, car electronics and servers for the US market at its new plant in Wisconsin by the end of next year, Mr Liu said, and plans to invest $1.5bn and employ up to 2,000 people by the end of 2020. At the first investor conference Foxconn hosted in its 45-year history, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer and largest assembler of Apple’s iPhone presented a new management structure designed to deal with the exit of Terry Gou, its founder, from day-to-day business as he runs for president of Taiwan.

Money Raising and Price Targets -- A little math

I'm not a financial wonk. I try not to look at the price of MicroVision stock all the time, but I am invested in a company that has the best portable projection technology.

What follows is all my opinion.

My investing thesis is simple: 

• We carry little computers in our pockets that we use to communicate, entertain, and retrieve data. 

• We want what we carry to be as small as possible
• We want the screen we view that entertainment and data to be as big as possible

• The only thing that can solve the big and small problem is a good projector that can turn any surface into a screen - as big as you might want.

• MicroVision has the best solution for this problem. No focus required, energy efficient, and tiny -- but still able to light up the side of a building at night, or even in bright light can give a cell phone a screen the size of a decent laptop screen. 

Manufacturing Issues:

Initial design: Designing a new product is a difficult proposition, often taking more years than most people think a thing would. MicroVision's PicoP is through this process.

Production: transition from prototypes to production of a product is extremely difficult. For MicroVision, PicoP was stalled partly because the production had to wait for the existence of required components.

Mass production and production processes are difficult to engineer. They can be constantly challenged with problems that may require significant redesigns. It can be very time consuming. A redesign of a single portion of a process requiring all other progress to halt for a time. It can't be rushed. Throwing more people and more money at this kind of problem generally doesn't make it faster. MicroVision is close to the end of this process with PicoP.

Initial Production to Mass Production: Transitioning from Initial production to mass production is easier to accomplish than the initial stages. Once the processes are figured out, duplicating the result is relatively easy. The first assembly line is very difficult to create. The following ones are simple, and can be done at a fantastic speed compared to the first. If you produced thousands of units the first year while perfecting the manufacturing process, producing millions of units in subsequent years is easier. MicroVision is beginning this process.

Market adoption: In the case of many new technologies, market adoption is difficult. Even today, we are surrounded by ultra-high resolution televisions that aren't being adopted because their is very little accessible content for them. Adopting the fax machine was very difficult, because they were useless without a network of them.

PicoP genuinely has NO impediments to mass market adoption. The content for them to use is widely available - from video media, data generated or pictures taken by the phone they will be embedded in being the favorite media. 

The transition to mass production and the lack of impediment to mass market adoption is the biggest reason I will continue to hold stock in this company no matter what the price does in the short term. 

"Dilution": MicroVision just raised money through issuance of more stock. While as an investor this certainly isn't an ideal case - when it is put in perspective it is certainly not a catastrophe.

Prior to the raise, there were approximately  47,500,000 shares of MicroVision stock.

By raising six million dollars at a price of $1.70 per share, there will be approximately 3,500,000 more shares of stock, raising the total number of shares to approximately 51,000,000 shares. Whatever you thought your ultimate price target was, you can reduce it by about 6%. My upside target is high enough that I don't think I will notice it much.

Mems Manufacturing -- UPDATED

At about 4:51 it talks about DLP mirrors, It's pretty dry, but good information and not all about manufacturing. (And it's about 6 years old - so nearly archaic in the field.) Produced by the industry group that was helpful to me at CES.

Completed camera Modules - note how they seem to have been assembled on a single chip, attached to each other.

Micro machining MEMS Same equipment and stuff that makes CMOS and computer chips. (I'll admit that I haven't had a chance to watch this entire video)