Immersion confirms good progress in turn around, ready to exceed 2010 guidance

Immersion Corporation (IMMR) reported 2Q 2010 results on Thursday, August 5^th (see Company's Press Release and Seeking Alpha transcripts).

Revenues for the quarter were $8.5 million, higher than consensus of $6.52 million, and the Company also reported 2Q EPS of $0.01, 8 cents better than the analysts average expectation of ($0.07).

A look at the highlights from the quarter, first:

• on track to meet or exceed the high end of the $25 to $30 million annual revenue guidance for 2010 (a phrase which sounds like a tremendous effort to postpone increasing outlook for the year to 3Q, more on this later);
• cash and cash equivalents at $63,9 million, a slight decrease from the $64,6 million as of March 31;
• achieved royalty and license revenue of $ 6,3 million in the quarter, compared to $ 6,4 million in 1Q, which is seasonally benefiting from the strong Christmas holiday period sales in mobility and gaming, that represent the majority of Immersion's royalties (as a reminder royalties for product sales are recognized the following quarter);
• reduced operating expenses to $7.2 million, including non-cash charges related to depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation. Excluding these non-cash charges operating expenses were $5.8 million during the quarter;
• generated positive adjusted EBITDA of $2 million;
• gross profit was $7.7 million, or 91% of revenues;
• announced a new licensee, Toshiba, which included Immersion's haptic technology into its new Libretto W 100, a dual touch screen Windows Mini Notebook PC.

There is no doubt that these numbers exceeded all expectations and confirm that Immersion is on track in its turn around effort, started when the company decided to change its business model and concentrate on licensing its impressive IP, in exchange for royalties.

If we have a look at the royalty and license revenue stream, we get a nice visual confirmation that Immersion has probably turned the corner:

Royalties in the 2Q 2010 are 76% higher than in the corresponding quarter a year ago, a strong validation of the positive momentum for haptics in the market place (quotes from the conference call, Seeking Alpha transcripts):

Vic Viegas

The industry clearly is in the midst of a very favorable technology trends that are expected to drive strong adoption of haptics. As we move to the back half of the year and complete our three-year strategic plan, the opportunities in these large and rapidly growing markets provide a level of excitement we've never experienced before.

A bit of housekeeping, before we get into a deeper analysis of Immersion's potential for the next few quarters.

Product revenues ($1.9 million) also included approximately $1 million from the three medical product lines that were sold to CAE Healthcare (CAE) in the 1Q 2010. Going forward, Immersion will only recognize royalties from these product sales, that will be done directly by CAE Healthcare (and by the way, royalties will start being recognized in the 3Q from CAE, although Immersion booking such a high level of sales in the 2Q makes us believe that license revenues from CAE might take a bit longer to reach a noticeable level).

For the future, Immersion will only recognize sales from the virtual IV product line, and, to a smaller level, development kits, and in some cases components that the Company makes available to partners as they develop products.

Another one time event that was underlined during the call is related to the royalty and license revenue stream. During the quarter Immersion booked about $ 500,000 as adjustments made by licensees to previous reports. This was described as not usual by management, although the amount is bigger than average:

Shawn Boyd - Westcliff Capital Management

the conversation earlier regarding royalties and the reconciliation of royalties in gaming, if we pull out the $0.5 million, we end up at about $5.8 million, is that correct?

Shum Mukherjee

In terms of prices.

Shawn Boyd - Westcliff Capital Management

Correct.

Shum Mukherjee

Yeah.

Shawn Boyd - Westcliff Capital Management

Adjusting for that. And then my next piece for that is should I really pull that out? I'm going back to Vic where what you said it happens frequently. So how often does it happen and should I really skew everything out?

Vic Viegas

Well, it's something that occurs on a regular basis. As I said, in this particular quarter looking back at prior quarters, I don't think we've had a quarter where the amount was quite as large. So I would say that some of that probably will not recur in Q3, but as our current licensees adjust their reports as products were added and so on that those minor adjustments occur on a pretty regular basis.

Shawn Boyd - Westcliff Capital Management

Okay. So, an order of magnitude if you get a $200,000 in reconciliation payments and royalties per quarter, that's too unusual.

Vic Viegas

Yeah, I would say that wouldn't be terribly unusual now.

Immersion also issued guidance for the 3Q 2010:

for Q3 given our current visibility we see revenues coming in between $6 million and $6.5 million which is consistent with our historical seasonal trends.

We believe the Company might have been conservative in its forecast, as phone sales from partners in the mobility market were quite solid in the 2Q, and the Company should hopefully benefit from an increase in touchscreen market share.

Even at the mid point of guidance, Immersion would reach revenues of about $ 24,5 million for the first three quarters of the year, leaving a forecast of about $ 5,5 million for the 4Q to reach the high end of guidance ($ 30 million). Given the wider adoption of haptic that we expect for the second half of the year (when new royalty streams, like semi conductor partners, should also emerge), we believe Immersion is on track to exceed guidance and exit the year with royalties exceeding $7 million per quarter.

As we said, Toshiba was announced during the conference call as a new licensee. Their product is an interesting dual 7-inch display notebook.

While we believe Toshiba is a great win, the product itself sounds more like a concept PC than a product that will be sold in great volume. Here are a few comments from Engadget (emphasis added):

The 1.2-inch thick Libretto W100 is covered in a black brushed aluminum finish, and is surrounded by a single USB port, an SD card reader and headphone jack.

You can choose to extend the desktop to the other screen or you can hit the physical keyboard button and just use the bottom screen as a keyboard. Speaking of that virtual keyboard, Toshiba has created six different layouts -- yes, six! You can check out some of those in the gallery, but the split keyboard is pretty cool if you want to just use your thumbs, and we're big fans of the haptic feedback.

Hopefully Immersion will be able to make more inroads in the exploding tablet market:

Jeff Schreiner - Capstone Investments

There's a new kind of form factor coming out in the PC market that incorporates very large touch screens, tablet-based designs when we seen products such as the Apple iPad. Has Immersion secured any tablet based design wins either direct or maybe though chip competitors? Is there any timeline in which over the next 6, 9, 12 months we might be able to expect royalties from this new segment?

Vic Viegas

as you are aware, there are number of others that are also considering and utilizing the Immersion technology whether direct from Immersion or through our chip partner, so we do expect to capitalize on that trend.

The Company also expects to increase the number of licensees in the mobility sector:

Aaron Husock - Lanexa Global

Vic, going in the past you've talked about hopefully signing a new handset licensee before the end of this year and having our product launched by the end of the market. Could you give us update on that? Are things on track? When should we expect to hear from you on that?

Vic Viegas

Well, you're here when we are able to announce it, but I think what I said is that we are working towards signing one to two new cell phone licensees by the end of the year and we'll hopeful that have a piezo based phone launched during this year. So, we're still working toward those in anticipation.

Looking beyond next quarter's results, we believe Immersion will be benefiting from new royalty streams. We've already mentioned the chip industry, that should start shipping products including Immersion's technology in good volumes in the second half of 2010. If we look at the comments made recently by most semiconductor licensees, expectations are very good on this front - let's go through some of their conference calls, after quoting Vic's commenst on this vertical:

We've got chip partners launching their touch controllers with the Immersion haptics we hope to have solutions in the market this year from Renesas and Cypress (CY) and possibly even Atmel (ATML), so that's also positive.

Integrated Device Technology (IDTI)

John Barton – Cowen

Okay. Last question, if I could. You highlighted recent success in Capacitative Touch. Just update, if you would please, strategy as far as future generations of Touch, just the overall direction from a product offering there please?

Ted Tewksbury

So, what you are seeing right now in Touch is the traction that we are getting with buttons, sliders and scroll wheels, which are used in an increasingly large number of appliances, both electronic light goods and so forth. We have design wins in everything from monitors to ebooks to rice cookers and then white goods in China, smart phones. So, those touch buttons and scroll wheels and sliders are getting good design wind traction. However, it’s still at a relative low level as far as our overall revenue is concerned. The real reason, the strategic reason that we acquired latest technologies was for the full screen Touch technologies, which are in development and I am not at liberty right now to talk anymore about those products, but we will be introducing Touch products later on in the year. We are also integrating some of those technologies in more highly integrated ASSPs such s the intelligent power management IC that we talked about in the prepared remarks, which also has an integrated Touch controller. So that’s a quick status on Touch.

Atmel (ATML)

Revenues by market segment showed strength across almost the entire spectrum of markets, with particular strength in the cell phone market and consumer.

…

We experienced broad strength in most of our end markets primarily driven by smartphones, consumers and industrial applications. Touch related revenues delivered strong growth in Q2, driven primarily by our maXTouch solutions. During the second quarter, we ramped volume shipments to Samsung, HTC, and Motorola.

In addition, maXTouch continues to be designed into the industry’s leading smartphones as demonstrated by the recent market releases of HTC’s EVO 4G, Samsung’s Galaxy S, and Motorola’s Driod XTreme. We are particularly enthusiastic about maXTouch acceptance into new applications beyond the handset marketplace.

In June, we announced maXTouch support for touchscreens up to 15.6 inches. Market research from this forecasts touchscreen demand in larger screen formats, such as personal computers will exceed to 115 million screens by 2014 with tablets leading the way.

In addition to handsets and tablet PCs, touch controllers have began to proliferate into gaming consoles, mobile Internet devices, GPS, digital cameras, remote controls, printers, and a broad range of industrial applications.

...

As previously stated, maXTouch is experiencing extraordinary customer acceptance, and despite the fact that production shipments didn’t occur until Q1, based on strong bookings, backlog, and planned capacity expansions, we expect maXTouch will generate over $100 million of revenues for 2010.

Cypress Corporation (CY)

Adam Benjamin – Jefferies
Got you. And then Norm, a question for you on TrueTouch. You’ve kind of talked about $100 million as a number for this year. Based on what you’re seeing now plus or minus what do you think?

Norm Taffe
Based on what we’re doing right now, we’re still on track to more than double what we did last year. It’s not clear yet whether we’ll look to get all the way up to the $100 number but we’re certainly on our plan more for than double this year.

Brad Buss
And I think importantly, we added, we received the first significant orders from two more of the top eight handset suppliers this quarter, which are going to ramp for us in Q3 and Q4. So now we are shipping volume in Q3 at five of the top eight handset suppliers on touch and so the backlog is really starting to ramp for us.

While this has not been mentioned during the conference call, we believe that the casino gaming vertical might be at an inflection point, as proved by the European launch of new products incorporating 3M's technology (MMM), based on the relationship with Immersion:

3M today announced that its next-generation surface capacitive touch technology has been incorporated in gaming machines built in central Europe for deployment worldwide.

3M's multi-sensory touch system offers games machine manufacturers and operators the chance to provide video-based, haptic feedback without mechanical buttons

Bracknell, UK, 26 July 2010 - Diversified technology company 3M today announced that its next-generation surface capacitive touch technology has been incorporated in gaming machines built in central Europe for deployment worldwide. Gold Club d.o.o. of Slovenia selected the 3M MicroTouch MCT System for many of their gaming machines, including their 22-inch multi-user electronic roulette tables, to provide a more responsive and immersive user experience. Gold Club has adopted this 3M touch solution for its own-built machines and selected it for externally-manufactured machines throughout its casino operations.

The 3M MicroTouch MCT System consists of an enhanced 3M MicroTouch Sensor SCT3256, a hybrid 3M MicroTouch Controller MX touch and haptic feedback electronics, and two or more touchscreen actuators, according to screen dimensions. This system provides haptic feedback effects for on-screen video buttons so users actually 'feel' like they are depressing mechanical buttons.

Haptic feedback effects are created when the user simultaneously sees a video button depress, hears an audio file of the mechanical 'click' and feels a vibration in the touch screen's glass surface. The user instinctively interprets the combination of these three sensations as pressing a mechanical button, when in reality they are simply touching a solid glass surface.

Here are a few more comments, taken from Electronicstalk:

Gold Club's experience highlights the key advantages of next-generation touch screen technology for the casino gaming industry, according to Francesco Fasoglio, business manager, 3M Touch Systems Division.

'Game designers are looking for new ways to enhance players' gaming experiences and keep them engaged for longer,' he said.

'Tactile feedback response, as embodied in our MCT System, enlivens the usual slot functions and heightens bonus round play experience.

'As well as replacing mechanical buttons on standalone machines, it's also ideal for multi-user games,' he added.

Disclosure: Long IMMR

IDT 1Q 2011 comments on touch

transcript from Seeking Alpha:

>>John Barton – Cowen

Okay. Last question, if I could. You highlighted recent success in Capacitative Touch. Just update, if you would please, strategy as far as future generations of Touch, just the overall direction from a product offering there please?

Ted Tewksbury

So, what you are seeing right now in Touch is the traction that we are getting with buttons, sliders and scroll wheels, which are used in an increasingly large number of appliances, both electronic light goods and so forth. We have design wins in everything from monitors to ebooks to rice cookers and then white goods in China, smart phones. So, those touch buttons and scroll wheels and sliders are getting good design wind traction. However, it’s still at a relative low level as far as our overall revenue is concerned. The real reason, the strategic reason that we acquired latest technologies was for the full screen Touch technologies, which are in development and I am not at liberty right now to talk anymore about those products, but we will be introducing Touch products later on in the year. We are also integrating some of those technologies in more highly integrated ASSPs such s the intelligent power management IC that we talked about in the prepared remarks, which also has an integrated Touch controller. So that’s a quick status on Touch.

Highlights from Atmel conference call

from Seeking Alpha transcripts:

>>Revenues by market segment showed strength across almost the entire spectrum of markets, with particular strength in the cell phone market and consumer.

...

We experienced broad strength in most of our end markets primarily driven by smartphones, consumers and industrial applications. Touch related revenues delivered strong growth in Q2, driven primarily by our maXTouch solutions. During the second quarter, we ramped volume shipments to Samsung, HTC, and Motorola.

In addition, maXTouch continues to be designed into the industry’s leading smartphones as demonstrated by the recent market releases of HTC’s EVO 4G, Samsung’s Galaxy S, and Motorola’s Driod XTreme. We are particularly enthusiastic about maXTouch acceptance into new applications beyond the handset marketplace.

In June, we announced maXTouch support for touchscreens up to 15.6 inches. Market research from this forecasts touchscreen demand in larger screen formats, such as personal computers will exceed to 115 million screens by 2014 with tablets leading the way.

It should be emphasized that at Atmel will ship multiple touch controllers into each system depending on screen size. We are already experiencing substantial customer design activity for touch-enabled tablets and expect volume shipments to begin in the fall of this year.

In addition to handsets and tablet PCs, touch controllers have began to proliferate into gaming consoles, mobile Internet devices, GPS, digital cameras, remote controls, printers, and a broad range of industrial applications.

...

As previously stated, maXTouch is experiencing extraordinary customer acceptance, and despite the fact that production shipments didn’t occur until Q1, based on strong bookings, backlog, and planned capacity expansions, we expect maXTouch will generate over $100 million of revenues for 2010.

...

Hans Mosesmann – Raymond James

Few questions on the larger screens or panels or touches being deployed and you may have multiple microcontrollers, for each microcontroller would there be the associated touch technology or is that the IP in like one place and then you’ll have the ASPs for each product for the microcontroller. In other words, do you get paid once for the touch technology and not multiple times?

Steve Laub

I’m not going to share too much detail, Hans, because of competitive reasons, but let me just tell you that we are selling multiple devices into that particular application, and you get paid for each device.

...

Raji Gill – Needham & Company

Excellent maXTouch revenue, great headlines, big high volume wins, any sense of your $100 billion revenue target for the year, whether that will be back-end loaded or will that potentially be equally split between the first half and second half?

Steve Laub

Given that production started in Q1, and it was really small then, you can count it’s quite back-end loaded.

Raji Gill – Needham & Company

Maybe could you talk a little bit about the design win pipeline for maXTouch, any color there in terms of are you expecting and there is a $100 million target incremental new design wins, new SKUs or is it just kind of a then combination of high sell-through forecast for the existing designs?

Steve Laub

With respect to being achieving the $100 million target for the year, it’s based on design wins that have already been won. Some of which have not been announced because the customers have not yet released their products. So it’s based on already won designs and obviously some of those is being released to production and obviously increases with respect to designs that have already been announced and released by the customers. What we’re obviously designing in now is going to impact and influence next year’s revenue.

...

Steve Laub

So we’re not giving a forecast right now of 2011 numbers for maXTouch. Today was the first day we gave any indications of the expectations for this year for maXTouch. Clearly, a lot of factors are going to influence that how next year is. But as stated in the earlier question, we are ramping each quarter, the revenues for maXTouch and clearly, the amount we’ll be doing in Q4 will be at a higher run rate than $100 million. What that will be? I’m not going to talk about today and speculate exact numbers right now. We’ll give you further updates as it becomes relevantly close to that timeframe.

Equinix's Vincent DiMemmo to explore key elements of cloud deployment architecture

from cloudcomputing.sys-con.com:

>>Having great application software and fast hardware are only half the battle. A scalable deployment architecture is equally necessary to achieve the economic and operational advantages of mainstream cloud services.

In his session at the 7th International Cloud Expo, Vincent DiMemmo, General Manager, Global Cloud & IT Services Segment at Equinix, will explore key elements of cloud deployment architecture and calls attention to the considerations necessary for a high quality end-user experience.

Capstone Investments Downgrades Immersion Corp (IMMR) to Hold; Limited Near-Term Catalysts + Valuation

from StreetInsider.com:

>>Capstone analyst says, "In our May 7th IMMR note, we highlighted limited catalysts following 1Q10 earnings report. Beyond our near-term concerns we believe several longer-term opportunities remain as catalysts; LCD integration, additional haptic licensee/potential litigation, CY/ATML/Renesas integration or new Piezo based products which will likely offer higher ASPs. However, many of these opportunities don't likely impact model until FY11 or beyond. Given significant rise in shares of IMMR, and forecasted limited near-term catalysts, we believe investors should "take a breather" and look for lower levels to build longer-term positions."







:

3M has announced that its next-generation surface capacitive touch technology has been incorporated in gaming machines built by Gold Club in Slovenia.

from Electronicstalk:

>>Gold Club's experience highlights the key advantages of next-generation touch screen technology for the casino gaming industry, according to Francesco Fasoglio, business manager, 3M Touch Systems Division.

'Game designers are looking for new ways to enhance players' gaming experiences and keep them engaged for longer,' he said.

'Tactile feedback response, as embodied in our MCT System, enlivens the usual slot functions and heightens bonus round play experience.

'As well as replacing mechanical buttons on standalone machines, it's also ideal for multi-user games,' he added.

Gaming Machines Take Haptic Feedback for a Spin

3M today announced that its next-generation surface capacitive touch technology has been incorporated in gaming machines built in central Europe for deployment worldwide.

3M's multi-sensory touch system offers games machine manufacturers and operators the chance to provide video-based, haptic feedback without mechanical buttons

Bracknell, UK, 26 July 2010 - Diversified technology company 3M today announced that its next-generation surface capacitive touch technology has been incorporated in gaming machines built in central Europe for deployment worldwide. Gold Club d.o.o. of Slovenia selected the 3M MicroTouch MCT System for many of their gaming machines, including their 22-inch multi-user electronic roulette tables, to provide a more responsive and immersive user experience. Gold Club has adopted this 3M touch solution for its own-built machines and selected it for externally-manufactured machines throughout its casino operations.

"As both an operator and manufacturer we want to deliver the best user experience to our customers," said Boštjan Stopar, General Manager of Gold Club. "We looked hard at the alternatives and the most powerful advantage was the strength of MicroTouch. MicroTouch is very nice for the user: it is fast, intuitive and has solved problems we have had in the past with mechanical integration and calibration."

Gold Club's experience highlights the key advantages of next-generation touch screen technology for the casino gaming industry, according to Francesco Fasoglio, business manager, 3M Touch Systems Division: "Game designers are looking for new ways to enhance players' gaming experience and keep them engaged for longer. Tactile feedback response, as embodied in our MCT System, enlivens the usual slot functions and heightens bonus round play experience. As well as replacing mechanical buttons on standalone machines, it's also ideal for multi-user games."

The 3M MicroTouch MCT System consists of an enhanced 3M MicroTouch Sensor SCT3256, a hybrid 3M MicroTouch Controller MX touch and haptic feedback electronics, and two or more touchscreen actuators, according to screen dimensions. This system provides haptic feedback effects for on-screen video buttons so users actually 'feel' like they are depressing mechanical buttons.

Haptic feedback effects are created when the user simultaneously sees a video button depress, hears an audio file of the mechanical 'click' and feels a vibration in the touch screen's glass surface. The user instinctively interprets the combination of these three sensations as pressing a mechanical button, when in reality they are simply touching a solid glass surface.

Gold Club's electronic roulette tables incorporate up to 10 touch screens all attached to a single main computer. The MCT System, with its 5.4ms minimum contact time and greater than 99 per cent positional accuracy, ensures fast response to finger input on multi-player games like roulette. Touch screen materials ensure 91.5 per cent light transmission (±1.5 per cent) for a crisp and vibrant display, and the robust 3M MicroTouch ClearTek surface coating provides optimal anti-glare properties. The scratch resistant top coat provides a smooth, easy glide touch surface.

Haptic feedback tools being developed for laparoscopic surgery training

from gizmag.com:

>>Laparoscopic gastric banding is a common surgical treatment for morbid obesity and the most critical factor in the success of the operation lies in the hands of the surgeon – who needs the proficiency and skill to insert slender, handheld tools into the body of the patient. A team of interdisciplinary researchers, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has recently won a US$2.3 million federal grant to develop a touch-sensitive virtual reality simulator that will realistically replicate how performing a gastric band operation feels – making it ideal for developing and teaching fundamental surgical skills and for assessing physicians wanting to be certified as a laparoscopic surgeon.
...
This new testing and training system that uses haptic technology – or touch feedback – will allow surgeons to practice and refine the surgical skills needed to perform a laparoscopic procedure in their own virtual operating theater.

Samsung’s Android Tablet Coming Within 60 days

from digitaltrend.com:

Samsung Electronics Co plans to introduce tablet computers this quarter based on Google’s Android operating system, joining a growing list of firms seeking to challenge Apple’s popular iPad.

IDC: Mobile phone shipments up 18.5% compared to the first half of 2009

from intomobile.com:

International Data Corporation (IDC) keeps meticulous records of who ships what in the mobile phone space and today they’re reporting that shipments for the first half of 2010 totaled 620.6 million units, up 18.5% from the 523.5 million units shipped during the first two quarters of 2009.
...

When you compare Q2 2010 to Q2 2009, shipments are up 14.5% to 317.5 million units from 277.2 million units a year ago. As for which vendors are hot, and which vendors are not, we’ve got Nokia in first place with 35% market share in Q2 2010, next is Samsung with 20.1%, LG with 9.6%, RIM and Sony Ericsson both have 3.5%, and “others” commanding 28.3% of the market. That’s a lot of Chinese clones and legit iPhones.

The biggest gainer, in terms of units shipped, from Q2 2009 to Q2 2010 was Research in Motion. They grew 40% in just the span of 1 year. Samsung is next, growing 22%, followed by Nokia’s 7.7% growth, and finally LG’s partly 2.7% gain.

...

Ramon Llamas, Senior Research Analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team, has the same thing on his mind:

Directly contributing to this [growth in Q2 shipments] is growth in the smartphone category. Companies with a strict focus on the smartphone market, like RIM, Apple, and HTC have clearly benefited from steadily increasing user interest. But it’s not just smartphone vendors that have driven the market forward – it’s also the companies with a presence among entry-level handsets and mid-range devices, which have long been the domain of the worldwide leaders.

2nd CK in Nevada: Las Vegas Cyberknife at Summerlin

from the IV MB, by yyy60:

>>2nd CK in Nevada: Las Vegas Cyberknife at Summerlin

At CyberKnife of Las Vegas, we’re giving patients new reasons for hope in their fight against cancer. To begin with, CyberKnife creates cancer treatment options that previously didn’t exist. For tumors considered medically inoperable and patients who are ineligible for surgery or chemotherapy, CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery can serve as an outstanding alternative

Immersion career opportunity

Applications Engineer
Location:	Tokyo, Japan
Requistion #:	IC2010-25

Job Description:

Based out of Tokyo, Japan the successful candidate will support our customers with in-field integration assistance and product training. The primary focus will be on post-sales support for the TouchSense product line, Immersion’s flagship vibration enhancement solution. Working closely with the Immersion sales and engineering teams, you will drive adoption of the TouchSense solution among project teams at target device makers as well as supporting content providers.

A new CK in Hyderabad, India??

from the IV MB, by yyy60:

>>A new CK in Hyderabad, India??

** translated from German **

Review improvisationsfreudigen a surgeon on the sidelines

23/07/2010
by Dr. Andrea Vincenzo Braga

South India - 14 hot days, short nights 13 - 22 hospitals - eight South Indian cities
22/04/2010

....

Diary Part 2:
Hyderabad, 3 until 02.04.2010
Integrated care and telemedicine operated schulbuchmässig

My new driver brings me to the airport with the funny Amarutha Castle Hotel. Like a medieval castle is built up ... only the droning techno music from the disco on the first floor will not quite fit it. A hearty breakfast must be to the tight schedule allows no lunch.

Another Apollo Hospital is on the program. This recording is overflowing, the interior renovation simple, but ok. At the other end of the corridor I expect an oasis of marble and stylish ambiance, the Platinum Lounge. The founder of the Apollo Hospitals, Dr. Reddy is a genius with the utmost dedication. The director for international business receives me, the questionnaire is processed quickly and accurately. The house leaves nothing to be desired. The emergency department is extremely efficient, with private ambulance Park. Led by an internationally trained physician.

....

The new oncology center will be opened in three months. Outdoor grind the stone masons, interior specialists program the most advanced CYBERKNIFE. to see before radiation oncology are flowers and fruits of sacrifice. A shaman performs a spiritual act - the way, is also prayed together briefly before each operation. It lacks neither the latest ultra high resolution CT (computer tomography) or an MRI (layer X)

Shipment of Russia's 2nd CK arrived Chelyabinsk

from the IV MB, post by yyy60:

>>Shipment of Russia's 2nd CK arrived Chelyabinsk

** translated from Russian **

Cyberknife arrived in Chelyabinsk in time. A unique system to combat cancer in the Oncological install

29/07/2010

Kibernozh (Cyberknife) taken from Hamburg. Installations for the removal of tumors throughout the body, including the most remote places (CyberKnife) will allow using tomography create three-dimensional model of the human body, ask a treatment program, and then attack the tumor or tumor. In fact, this robotic arm that is capable of due to the high accuracy of concentrating the target is smaller than one cubic centimeter and irradiate them with great power, at times greater than that used in conventional radiation therapy.

Installation of "Kibernozha" in the District Cancer Centre will take several weeks. For him, prepared a special room a three-meter walls. The first operations with the help would come with the end of the year. Today, the American system "Kibernayf" (Cyberknife) have no more than two dozen countries, most in the world of high-precision "knives" are no more than two hundred.

Cell Phone Units Up 13% In Q2

from Barron's:

>>Cell Phone Units Up 13% In Q2

• Nokia (NOK) shipped 111.1 million handsets, growing 8%; they estimate the company’s market share at 36%, down from 38% a year ago. The firm notes that while the new N8 smart phone could held in the second half, the phone will be hampered by a lack of retail presence in the U.S.

• Samsung shipped 63.8 million units, up 22%. The research firm thinks the new Galaxy S smart phone has “gotten off to a relatively good start.”
• LG shipped 30.6 million handsets, up just 3%.
• Research In Motion (RIMM) shipped 11.2 million phones, up 40% from a year ago, but the firm ntoes that its position in North American is coming under pressure from Apple (AAPL) and Android. “The Blackberry OS 6 upgrade, which should deliver a better touchscreen user-experience in time for the western holiday season, is sorely needed to improve its outlook in North America,” the research firm says.
• Sony Ericsson shipped 11 million handsets in the quarter, down 20%.
• Apple (AAPL) shipped 8.4 million iPhones, up 61%; it now has almost 3% market share, up from 2%. But Strategy Analytics writes that “Apple may have lost some heartshare in recent weeks because of its perceived mishandling of the antenna problem, and Apple will have to work hard during the second half of the year to stop lost heartshare converting into lost marketshare.” (Uh, I’ve heard of mindshare, but “heartshare”?)
• Motorola (MOT) shipped 8.3 million handsets, a third of those smart phones; units were barely more than half of the year-ago level, as the company reinvents itself as a specialist in Android-based smart phones.

Strategy Analytics sees Q3 shipments of 325 million phones, up 12%.

Cell phone shipments continue to recover

from Yahoo finance:

>>Cell phone shipments continue to recover

NEW YORK (AP) -- The number of cell phones shipped worldwide rose 14.5 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, with much of the growth coming from smaller challengers like the iPhone and BlackBerry, according to research firm IDC.

Manufacturers shipped 317.5 million phones in the quarter, IDC said in its report late Thursday.

..

Nokia Corp. of Finland is still the world's largest maker of phones, but its growth is slower than the industry's and its share of the market is 35 percent compared to 40 percent two years ago. Motorola Inc. has fallen to seventh place in the world from number three. Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc., both based in South Korea, are No. 2 and 3.

Meanwhile, Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry is now the fourth-largest maker of phones worldwide, shipping 11.2 million units. Close behind is Apple Inc., with 8.4 million units and HTC Corp. of Taiwan, with 6.5 million.

Equinix Continues to Execute

some comments from Morningstar.com:

>>Equinix Continues to Execute

As Equinix begins to consolidate its new assets into the mix, we like the direction the firm is heading. Revenues were up 39% from the year-ago quarter, with North America being the star of the show (up more than 62% year-over-year), which includes two months of Switch and Data consolidation. Although the Switch and Data merger helped boost sales, injecting in the lower margin assets dropped the North American EBITDA margin 4 percentage points to 46.7%.

Increased Scale Leaves EQIX In Dominant Market Position

from Benzinga.com:

>>Increased Scale Leaves EQIX In Dominant Market Position

Analysts at Oppenheimer & Co upgrade Equinix Inc (NASDAQ: EQIX) from "perform" to "outperform," while reducing their estimates for the company. The target price for EQIX is set to $115.

According to Oppenheimer & Co, “Our more constructive stance on EQIX shares is predicated on the following considerations: 1) improving visibility into 2H10/2011 growth trajectory with close of SDXC acquisition; 2) faster-than-expected realization of synergy benefits, generating margin expansion in 4Q10 and beyond; 3) increased scale leaves EQIX in a dominant market position and should aid pricing power; 4) underlying colo market demand/supply fundamentals remain relatively healthy; and 5) strong balance sheet should allow EQIX to access expansion financing at attractive rates.”

JP Morgan Gives ‘Overweight’ Rating To Equinix, Inc (EQIX)

from Benzinga.com:

>>JP Morgan Gives ‘Overweight’ Rating To Equinix, Inc (EQIX)

JPMorgan has released a research report on global data service Company Equinix, Inc (NASDAQ: EQIX). It gave an ‘Overweight’ rating to the stock with a target price of $130. The stock is currently trading at $91.95.
...

The analysts feel that the company will continue to grow over next two quarters, citing the fact that the company is poised to take market share in collocation services. Hence, the company will have more visible revenue growth.

Samsung results

from Bloomberg.com, emphasis added.

>>LCD TVs

Global shipments of LCD TVs may rise 24 percent to more than 180 million units in 2010, Austin, Texas-based DisplaySearch said in March. Samsung, the world’s largest TV maker, said in January it expects to sell 35 million LCD sets this year.

Samsung, also the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, said profit from the telecommunications division fell 36 percent to 630 billion won as the company lagged behind Apple and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. in the smartphone market. Second-quarter handset shipments climbed 22 percent to 63.8 million year on year, Samsung said.

Worldwide sales of smartphones will increase 36 percent to 247 million in 2010 and expand 30 percent next year, El Segundo, California-based research company Isuppli said in April.

Samsung aims to more than double its share of the smartphone market, helped by the introduction of the Galaxy S model, Lee Donjoo, senior vice president of the company’s Mobile Communications Division, said on June 21.

...

from Reuters:

>>Samsung sold 63.8 mobile phones in the second quarter, down from 64.3 million units sold in the previous quarter,

Wikipedia out of Equinix Ashburn in 2011

from Web Host Industry Review:

>>Q&A: Jay Walsh, spokesperson for Wikimedia

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- As a non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation (www.wikimedia.org) has relied on the donations of individuals and groups to maintain the popular Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), and its other sites.

WHIR: What makes Virginia an ideal location to build the second US data center?

JW: Wikimedia Foundation projects are important to hundreds of millions of people now, and they deserve to be hosted in the best possible way. Most of the top 10 websites in the world host at least part of their traffic out of Ashburn, Virginia because of the Equinix facility and their superior interconnectivity options. When we were visiting around in June we saw cages populated by very well known and high-traffic entities, which made us feel right at home.

...

We hope to bring the new data center online by January 1st, 2011.

Equinix 2Q Results: Switch and Data integration ahead of expectations

Equinix (EQIX) reported 2Q 2010 results last Wednesday night (see its Press Release and Seeking Alpha transcripts).

On separate Press Releases, the Company also announced the opening of DC6, its sixth IBX data center in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, with a capacity of 1,750 cabinets, and the third expansion phase within the Singapore SG2 IBX data center, that will add another 850 cabinets to that specific market (more on these expansions later).

Some highlights on a few metrics we usually follow for a better understanding the Company's performance:

• Revenues came at $ 296.1 million, at the low end of Company's guidance and met analysts' expectations. Exchange rate negatively impacted the 2Q revenues by $3.4 million
• 2Q EPS of -$0.05 may not be comparable to consensus, and the negative result was mainly impacted by restructuring, integration and acquisition costs related to the Switch and Data acquisition
• Churn remained at 2.2%, in line with Company's expectations
• 216 new customers in the quarter, including Switch and Data
• Cash gross margins remained at 65%, ahead of expectations
• Adjusted EBITDA came ahead of expectations, at $ 132.2 million, or 44.6% of revenues (as a reminder Switch and Data negatively impacted this metric, exiting 1Q with 35.9% against Equinix's 47.2%)
• Strong cabinet additions in all markets [over 800 in North America (combined Company), over 2,200 in Europe and over 300 in Asia Pacific]
• Record cross connects in Europe (plus 11.9%, or almost 1,200 new connections), as the interconnection business is getting traction in that market, too.
• 359 10 Gig ports on the Equinix exchange, and 160 on the Switch and Data corresponding service
• Equinix narrowed 2010 guidance, lowering the mid point from $1,232.5 to 1,230 million (including a $ 4 million negative FX impact), but increased EBITDA guidance from $ 525 to $ 535 million to $ 535 to 540 million.
• Record bookings in all regions.

Back to the announced expansions.

DC6 will complement Equinix’s existing five data centers in the Washington, D.C. Market, that currently feature more than 470,000 square feet of data center space and access to more than 180 networks, making the campus one of the richest IP network interconnection points in the U.S., and the most important peering point on the East Coast.

The expansion, at full occupancy, will add about $ 40 million of revenues a year.

The newly announced Singapore expansion may come unexpected to some readers.

Singapore SG2 Phase 1 was launched in July 2009, with a capacity of 700 cabinets. More than 500 cabinets (or 75%) are now billing, and the recently announced Phase 2, due to open in September 2010 with a capacity of 1,000 cabinets, is already nicely booked. Some comments, recently published on the Business Times Singapore (subscribers only, a quote is available on our blog) may add some color to the story:

'We continued to experience strong growth within the Asia-Pacific region even during the global recession in 2009, and more so this year,' Mr Lee (Equinix's Asia-Pacific president) says. 'In fact, last year we opened a second DC in both Singapore and Sydney, and expanded our Hong Kong DC as well. This year the boom is back and we should see a strong surge in enterprise data. Much of that data would need to sit in DCs.'

In 2008, Singapore had a total of about 170,000 sq m of DC capacity, up 15 per cent over 2007. Not much capacity was added in 2009 due to the recession in 2008. But in 2010, demand may outstrip supply by up to 20 per cent, according to industry sources. Apart from Equinix, there are a slew of DC players such as SingTel, NCS, Tata Communications, ST Engineering and Fujitsu Asia.

According to industry analysts, the demand for DC space significantly outpaces supply in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan (APJ) region, with 50 per cent of the demand being driven by government initiatives, and the rest by Internet media, telecom and IT companies.

'Demand for DC hosting currently exceeds supply,' research house Frost & Sullivan's analyst Wu Chengyu says. 'In fact, over 80 per cent of the major DCs in the Asia-Pacific are running at close to 90 per cent capacity, and space is at a premium.'

1Q Red Flags

Some readers may remind that Equinix added 100 cabinets only in the USA (on a weighted average basis, the metric we prefer) during the first quarter of 2010. Looking at quarter end cabinets equivalents billing, the result was even worse, as the Company showed a zero net addition.

This quarter's result (more than 600 organic cabinets added by Equinix alone, plus about 200 by the former Switch and Data at quarter end), bring Equinix back to its standards.

Here is an interesting view of cabinets' billing and weighted MRR for each region (slides from Equinix Earnings conference call Presentation, click to enlarge):

Excluding currency fluctuations for Europe (and Asia to a lesser degree), monthly recurring revenues per cabinets show continuous strength, as customers keep adding more services (cross connects, etc.) and pricing remains stable in all markets served by Equinix. Switch and Data is basically in line with Equinix as far as cabinet MRR in the North American market.

Switch and Data

While we were a bit disappointed by the former Switch and Data result in the quarter (lower than our expectations, in spite of a good cabinets addition), Equinix stated that the integration is ahead of schedule, and the first sales synergies are emerging between the footprints of the two former separate Companies.

Equinix is working on standardizing metrics between the two Companies, and will have to wait for 2Q for additional color on this.

On the cost side, Equinix now expects to be able to achieve about 75% of synergy savings by year end, a steady improvement from the previous forecast of about 50%.

Financial vertical

During the call management reiterated that the Financial vertical is representing today a very strong market worldwide, as already noted by some competitors like SAVVIS (SVVS) during its recent conference call (Seeking Alpha transcripts):

Jim Ousley

Last week I spent a day with our lead salespeople from around the world, and I can tell you the message was loud and clear. The financial vertical has returned to strength. The challenges from 2008 and 2009 are behind the financial companies and there’s been an important change in how many of these companies are thinking about their IT requirements.

An interesting article on the role of the neutral data center in 21st century trading has recently been published by Equinix's Robin Manicom, director of financial services:

The complexity and volume of electronic trading has increased exponentially over the past decade as the financial industry continues to invest heavily in computer-driven technology. The Financial Information Forum reports that from 2006 to 2009 peak messages per second increased more than fivefold, leaping from 314,733 to 1,795,348 – and this growth rate continues its climb unabated.

This evolving landscape means today’s market participants are under unprecedented pressure to process higher and higher volumes of data – and fulfil their increasing compliance obligations – all without compromising their ability to execute their trades in real-time. It is this requirement that has placed technology at the very centre of trading in the 21st century. And if technology has become the key facilitator for trading, then it is fair to conclude that the neutral data centre has become the cornerstone for the rapidly expanding world of global financial markets.

We'll come back with more thoughts about Equinix's results later on, but for the time being we would like to end the article looking at the long term potential of the Company.

Equinix's growth has made it difficult to evaluate the real strength of the business model. Each time a new data center opens, costs associated with the ramp up of operations (employees, etc.) put a shadow on the Company's real performance.

Some of the slides prepared by Equinix for this quarter's call help put some numbers in perspective, both for the expansion rationale and the long term operating plan (emphasis added):

Disclosure: Long EQIX

LG TV

a follow up to a previous post, thanks to Jeffbas for the link.

from tgdaily.com:

>>The segment is hot, hot hotStrong demand for LCD TVs and lower pricing are both contributing to increased sales of the units.

Market research company DisplaySearch said that in Q3 2009, sales were up year on year in terms of units for the first time in a year.

And next year that growth will continue, with the analysts predicting total shipments will rise from 205 million units this year to 218 million units next year. That represents a six percent increase.

CampusEAI Consortium Announces Private Cloud for Higher Education

Private Cloud enables institutions to host enterprise applications

CampusEAI Consortium

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 28, 2010 – CLEVELAND - July 27, 2010 - CampusEAI Consortium today announced the availability of the CampusEAI Consortium Private Cloud for higher education. The CampusEAI Private Cloud is powered by industry vendors and service providers including Dell (Nasdaq GS: DELL), AT&T (NYSE:

T), NetApp (Nasdaq GS: NTAP), VMware (NYSE: VMW), Symantec (Nasdaq GS:SYMC), Equinix (Nasdaq GS: EQIX) and Cisco (Nasdaq GS: CSCO).

The system resides in Equinix -powered data centers. CampusEAI Consortium’s 24x7x365 network operations center monitors the uptime and security of the enterprise applications in CampusEAI Private Cloud.

LG TV

During the last conference call, Cypress semiconductor announced a win in the LCD vertical (from Seeking Alpha transcripts):

>>Lucky Gold Star put our CapSense into their new flat-panel TV. That’s a big trend right now. When you have a sleek black flat-panel TV, you don’t want ordinary knobs and buttons sticking out of the bottom. So we’re getting a lot of CapSense business on that.

While it is too soon to speculate if Immersion's technology might be used (although LG is a customer and the chip includes Immersion's technology), it may be appropriate to study the potential market.

This is taken from Bloomberg:

Global shipments of LCD TVs may rise 19 percent to about 169 million units in 2010, according to El Segundo, California- based ISuppli Corp. in May.

Isupply also forecasts 78 million units of 3D TVs in 2015.

More info from Twice.com:

>>LG Display commanded the biggest portion of large-sized LCD panel unit shipments in the first quarter, at 24.9 percent. The company now is expanding its capacity at its advanced 8.5 generation LCD fabs.

Samsung, with 22.4 percent share of unit shipments, also is plowing capital outlay into adding more 8.5 generation capacity.

In terms of large-sized LCD panel revenue, however, the two Korean giants trade places, with Samsung ranked at the top and LG Display in second.

Global production by area for large-sized LCD panels is projected to rise significantly as more capacity comes online in 2010. Production by area for large-sized LCD panels will rise 7 percent sequentially during the fourth quarter of 2010, leading to a 44 percent annual expansion for the entire year. Growth then will continue unabated for the next year, with production by area increasing 16 percent in 2011.

LG Electronics 2Q

from WSJ:

>>LG Electronics Inc. (066570.SE) said Wednesday its second-quarter net profit fell 33% from a year earlier as many of its key businesses, including cell phones and flat-screen televisions, suffered from a slowdown in key European export markets.

LG saw its cellphone division deliver disappointing results in the second quarter. Although the company sold more handsets, it had to slash prices to boost sales, resulting in the division posting an operating loss margin of 3.5%, compared with a 0.9% profit margin in the first quarter.

During the second quarter, the company sold 30.6 million handsets, up from 27.1 million units in the first quarter.

Competition in the smartphone space has been intensifying as LG's rivals, including Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., gain more ground. Although analysts expect the results to pick up from the third quarter onwards, they note that LG's handset business may not record a turnaround until the fourth quarter when the company is slated to roll out new smartphones running on Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

At LG's home entertainment division, which makes flat-screen TVs and plasma display panels, operating profit fell to KRW28.1 billion in the second quarter from KRW267.8 billion a year earlier. Sales rose 19% to KRW5.361 trillion from KRW4.504 trillion.

Equinix Earnings Preview For Q2/2010

Telecom Rumblings is kindly hosting our forecast:

>>Equinix will report earnings tonight.

This quarter will also include Switch and Data revenues (from May 1^st), and the conference call will represent an interesting update on the integration efforts (and planned future developments) of the combined Company, the dominant US neutral colo player.

Read more at this link.

Pacnet joins $447m Sydney-US undersea cable

from IT news Australia:

>>Pacnet joins $447m Sydney-US undersea cable

Pacnet was also said to be "aggressively" examining options to build its own data centres. It currently has space shared between Global Switch and Equinix's IBX facility in Sydney.

Baron Funds Quarterly Letter

from gurufocus.com:

>>On Equinix

Despite receiving approval to close its Switch & Data acquisition in February, which had been weighing on the shares for months, Equinix shares ultimately traded down in the second quarter, due to weakening currencies and then concerns about a double dip recession. Equinix has some exposure to the euro and the British pound, but we believe that the impact in terms of translated financials is modest. Meanwhile, end-demand for the company’s data centers has remained robust, and the company is on track to continue to fill its available capacity, while adding new capacity as needed around the world. Management continues to be disciplined in reinvesting its excess cash flow, targeting expansions that drive attractive returns on investment, while the base business continues to be characterized by a high degree of recurring revenue. (Rich Rosenstein)

Immersion 2Q 2010 Earnings Preview

Immersion (IMMR) will be reporting 2Q 2010 results on August 5^th.

The Company surprised on the upside in the 1Q, for a combination of factors that included a stronger than expected performance in product sales, and also some seasonality (as royalties on products like mobile phones and gaming, that are sold in higher volumes in the Christmas holiday period, are recognized in the subsequent quarter).

Immersion is transitioning toward a licensing model only.

The Company recently completed the sale of its medical division to CAE Healthcare (CAE), and for this reason it will not recognize any product sale, from this segment, in the quarter. It must be noted, however, that due to the delayed timing of royalty recognition, it will not recognize any license revenue stream from CAE, too, in the 2Q.

In our opinion, it is important to remind that it would be fair, for a real apple to apple comparison, to analyze 2Q results against the 1Q excluding product sales (that accounted for about $2 Million in the 1Q), and keeping in mind that seasonality and the lack of royalties from the medical division sold to CAE will certainly play an important role in the final numbers. We are obviously hoping that management will give out as many details as possible on the matter to help investors get a proper understanding of the Company's performance.

During the last conference call, Immersion guided for revenues in the $6.2 to $6.7 Million range (from Seeking Alpha 1Q conference call transcripts):

Victor Viegas - CEO

In terms of our near-term outlook, we would expect total revenues in Q2 to be in the range of $6.2 million to $6.7 million, down on a comparative basis sequentially, reflecting our transition to a licensing model as well as typical downward seasonal trend based on our revenue recognition.

Analysts estimate revenues of $ 6.5 Million, and EPS of ($0.07).

On the cost side, the Company should start showing much lower operating expenses, due in part to the reduced headcount, following the transaction with CAE Healthcare, and also to lower legal and administrative fees.

Immersion ended the 1Q with $ 64,6 million of cash and cash equivalents, and while we do expect some cash burn in this quarter, it is a Company's target to reduce costs in order to be cash flow positive with revenues of just around $7 Million a quarter.

During the quarter, the Company issued a limited number of press releases, mainly related to the Medical segment.

Immersion announced a license agreement with SOFAR S.p.A., a leading Italian manufacturer of medical devices for minimally invasive surgery, and, probably more important, the conclusion of a litigation with Simbionix USA Corporation, the world's leading provider of simulation and training products for medical professionals and the healthcare industry, that has now become a licensee, too.

As the official flow of information from the Company was relatively quiet in the quarter, we will be looking for more information about the sectors Immersion is targeting from some of its licensees.

As we write, one of Immersion's partners in the semiconductor segment, Cypress Corporation (CY) reported 1Q results. Some of their comments may be worth a quote (from Seeking Alpha transcripts, our comments in Italic):

Brad Buss – CFO

We expect record revenue for PSoC in TrueTouch in the third quarter and for the entire fiscal year 2010. (see: Next-Generation Cypress TrueTouch™ and CapSense® Solutions Enable Innovative Products with Tactile Feedback to Improve User Experience)

Ashish Rao – Credit Suisse

Could you update us on where the TrueTouch revenues were for the quarter and if you’ve gone past the customer pick up that you saw in the March quarter and also as you look ahead to 2011, how do you view the tablet opportunity versus the predominantly handset smartphones today?

Norm Taffe

Hi, Ashish. This is Norm. So, I think the second part of your question was related to what kind of momentum we’re seeing in terms in the March quarter and going forward on touch. My answer to that is we continue to see great momentum there. In fact, we said another design win record in Q2 as far as wins in the touch space.

It is also interesting to note that both Immersion and Cypress seem to share the same interest as far as new segments to pursue for their products (emphasis added):

T.J. Rodgers

Lucky Gold Star put our CapSense into their new flat-panel TV. That’s a big trend right now. When you have a sleek black flat-panel TV, you don’t want ordinary knobs and buttons sticking out of the bottom. So we’re getting a lot of CapSense business on that.

In addition, we’ve gotten automotive qualified PSoC is capable of doing can and win, PSoC 3 can and rest are the win, which are the automotive bus standards, and that means that we allow quick integration of touchscreens into automobiles. We’ve been qualified, automotively qualified and our biggest win is the Chevrolet Volt, the new electric car where we are in the center panel of the car.

The mention of the Automotive market is interesting, as Immersion has been working with Visteon (VSTNQ) for quite some time.

For those who love speculations, we could mention that Brad W. Buss, Cypress Corporation's CFO, is also sitting on the BoD of Tesla Motors (TSLA), another car producer who might implement Immersion's product in its new Model S (this quote is taken from Immersion's 1Q 2009 conference call):

Clent Richardson

And Road and Track Magazine just gave a sneak peak at the new 2012 Tesla Model S highlighting its use of Haptics, noting a 17 inch touch screen entertainment system in the center console with Haptic interface.

Turning back to Cypress Semiconductors, a few more quotes about the trends in touchscreens, which confirm a good momentum in general and new customers' wins in the mobile phone arena for Cypress (emphasis added) - will Immersion benefit from this?

Adam Benjamin – Jefferies

Got you. And then Norm, a question for you on TrueTouch. You’ve kind of talked about $100 million as a number for this year. Based on what you’re seeing now plus or minus what do you think?

Norm Taffe

Based on what we’re doing right now, we’re still on track to more than double what we did last year. It’s not clear yet whether we’ll look to get all the way up to the $100 number but we’re certainly on our plan more for than double this year.

Brad Buss

And I think importantly, we added, we received the first significant orders from two more of the top eight handset suppliers this quarter, which are going to ramp for us in Q3 and Q4. So now we are shipping volume in Q3 at five of the top eight handset suppliers on touch and so the backlog is really starting to ramp for us.

TeleGeography Submarine Cable and Equinix Data Center map

We would like to offer you a limited edition 2010 TeleGeography Submarine Cable and Equinix Data Center map.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

>>Here at StockCharts, we are constantly looking for ways to get you our charts as quickly and consistently as possible. Much of the past two months has been spent adding and testing two different "web acceleration" technologies to our site in an effort to reduce the time it take for our charts to move across the Internet.

The first technology we tried came from a company called Akamai. While this technology works well for other websites and, at first, showed some promising results for us, when we dug deeper we discovered that it really wouldn't work well for us mainly because when the market is open our charts cannot be cached (i.e., saved for later reuse).

The second technology looks much more promising however. It is called "XIP" and it comes from InterNAP, the same company that currently connects us to the Internet. XIP dynamically adjusts the low-level settings that control how data flows across the Internet. It works best when transmitting large items (such as a chart) across long distances. The bigger the object and/or the longer the distance, the more XIP helps.

(Another really nice thing about XIP is that it doesn't require any changes to your computer - it's a change that we make here in our datacenter. No install, no settings to mess with, just improved speed - pretty nice!)

At this point we've completed our internal testing of XIP and the results look good. In our tests, XIP reduced the time it takes to send out our charts by 30 to 40% in most cases. That said, we now need your help. We want to make sure that if we switch to XIP it won't cause any problems for our users.

Read more at this link.

Waters Rankings 2010

Best Hosting Provider
Equinix

http://www.waterstechnology.com/waters/news/1724170/waters-rankings-2010-all-winners

Equinix 2Q 2010 Earnings Preview

Equinix (EQIX) will be reporting 2Q 2010 results on Wednesday, July 28th.

This call will be particularly interesting as Equinix completed the acquisition of Switch and Data in the quarter - while we do not expect that the two Companies might have already developed significant synergies, we are sure that the conference call will be useful to give investors additional color on the status of the integration.

According to its updated guidance given on May 7^th, Equinix expects revenues to be in the range of $296.0 to $298.0 million, with cash gross margins of about 64%. This forecast reflects a closing date of April 30, 2010 for the Switch and Data acquisition, which therefore will contribute to Equinix’s results from May 1, 2010 onwards only.

As a side note, the strength of the US dollar (or, said in a different way, the recent weakness of the Euro, which represented about 16% of revenues for the former stand alone Equinix) might have negatively impacted Equinix's non-US results for the quarter, as guidance was given using, for example, $1.36 dollar to the Euro.

On a same currency basis, we expect Equinix's performance in Europe and Asia to show very good strength, in spite of currency conversions.

Analysts estimate revenues of 295.9M on average, slightly below Company's guidance, and EPS of $ 0.24.

The strategic importance of the Switch and Data merger deserves spending a good part of this article reviewing, once more, the reasons behind the acquisition and its potential impact on Equinix numbers/synergies going forward.

Equinix's recent “Update Call on Closure of Switch and Data Acquisition” comes handy to resume several information:

Steve Smith - Equinix Inc. - President, CEO

The strategic rationale for this acquisition centers around five key elements. Gaining a quick entry in new markets, securing additional capacity in our existing markets, enhancing our core focus on network density and interconnection services, and producing strong financial synergies to enhance the accretiveness of this transaction. Finally this transaction continues to distance Equinix from other data center providers, and further establishes us as the only global network neutral data center provider, and clearly with the largest North American footprint.

The comment about the additional capacity is interesting, as Equinix, with this acquisition, has basically doubled the number of cabinets available for sale in the North American market.

We believe that the impact of this new inventory will start producing positive effect mostly in the second half of 2010:

Steve Smith - Equinix Inc. - President, CEO

Secondly, we will drive top-line growth with a strong focus on achieving revenue synergies across both sales organizations. An early sign of success over the past week is that we have already identified several Equinix customers that are interested in the Switch & Data inventory, and we have also started to receive inbound lead opportunities to cross-sell Switch & Data customers into Equinix's global footprint.

In our opinion, the New York metro area will strongly benefit from the combination of the Switch and Data inventory and the great success that Equinix is achieving within the financial vertical (comment added in Italic):

Steve Smith - Equinix Inc. - President, CEO

In the New York metro area, we have now acquired three data centers in New York City, two of which are located within key telecom landing points. Additionally, the capacity gain from their sizable new data center in Bergen County, will supplement our existing footprint in New Jersey, which we expect to be important in meeting the demand from our financial services customer base.

Given our historical fill rates in this metro, we are very excited by the additional capacity in both New Jersey locations (the former Switch and Data Bergen facility and the new Equinix NY4 third phase expansion).

Equinix has recently been in the news for several wins within the financial community, like Deutsche Börse Systems, selecting Equinix as strategic data center provider in Frankfurt, Germany and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), operator of the Australian futures market, deploying its new hosting solution within the Equinix Chicago (CH1) data center. Several networks have also announced connections to different Equinix's data centers worldwide, targeting the low latency needs of financial institutions. As a reminder, Equinix is the only colo provider with a presence at all major exchange markets worldwide.

Focusing on the New York market, Direct Edge has just converted its trading platforms to formal Exchanges, and is now operating from the Equinix NY4 data center, a move which could represent an important catalyst for the financial community.

These comments are taken from Securities Technology Monitor:

In 2,500 square feet of space, you can house a typical Radio Shack store, with hundreds of electronic products, ranging from smart phones to car security systems to MP3 players to weather radios to cables and batteries.

Or, in roughly the same amount of space, you can house a stock exchange. Or two.

Such is the case with EDGA and EDGX, the two newly approved stock exchanges owned by Direct Edge, which formally debut Wednesday in Secaucus, N.J. As competition in securities trading venues goes up, so does the drive for speed and “scalability,’’ the ability to expand rapidly and reliably.

…

Unlike the New York Stock Exchange, you won’t see a monster-sized flag draped over where Direct Edge operates the new trading platforms that will power EDGA and EDGX. The two exchanges sit side by side, in a black wire cage inside a nondescript industrial building that could just as easily hide a distribution warehouse.

Spare servers in this cage provide immediate backup, in case of failure. A second cage with copies of the entire EDGA and EDGX trading exchanges sits in another nondescript building in North New Jersey, just in case.
...

From the get-go, the new system will be able to handle 220,000 messages every second, while keeping up the pace of acknowledging each order in less than half a million. Each of the two exchanges can handle 2.5 billion transactions a day. “That is four times the capacity of even the days surrounding the Flash Crash,’’ said O’Brien. “So there is significant head room there.”
...

“There is no theoretical limit” to the amount of transactions Direct Edge will be able to handle each day, Bonanno said, at these speeds.

More information about the Direct Edge Exchange come from wallstreetandtech.com:

Direct Edge Chief Executive William O'Brien said the company is not about to venture into unfamiliar territory with its exchange status, which means tighter regulatory oversight.

But he said a new data center launched during the conversion opens a new battle front with competitors in selling trading data to increasingly hungry investors.

"That's something we view as a way to broaden our competitive footprint," O'Brien said in an interview. "As great as this company has progressed so far, I still feel like it is still getting started."

Just hours before ringing the exchanges' opening bell in Jersey City Wednesday, O'Brien told Reuters Insider that Direct Edge "could potentially" list its shares in an initial public offering. The IPO plan was originally set for this year.

From an interconnection stand point, Equinix has increased the number of networks and ISPs connected to its data centers from 410 to 575. Switch and Data's success in network density was unparalleled in the industry, and approximately 31% of revenues were represented by interconnection services, or more than double Equinix numbers. Switch and Data Palo Alto and Equinix Ashburn represent the two most important peering points on the West and East Coast of the USA, and both Company’s regional data centers will benefit from the wider offer of ISPs and networks that they will now be able to offer to their existing customers base.

From a financial point of view, Equinix will take advantage of Switch and Data'S NOLs, and expects to generate about $20 million of synergy savings within one year, which is quite a substantial amount, if we consider that it does represent about 10% of Switch and Data cash costs.

Equinix is also estimating acquisition costs of about $23 million for professional and legal fees, that will be split between 2009 and 2010. Integration costs will also be substantial:

Keith Taylor - Equinix Inc. - CFO

For each of the quarters through the integration period, we will provide you an estimate of what we believe the integration costs to be, and compare those costs against the savings attributed to our synergies. For 2010 we expect the integration costs to be $2 million greater that the cost savings relating to the synergies. But as we looked at the entire integration period, as Steve mentioned, we expect to receive a minimum of $20 million in annual cost savings from this transaction, half of those annualized savings should be realized by the end of the year. The restructuring costs associated with this deal will primarily be incurred over the next three or four quarters, and will be expensed to the income statement on a separate income statement line. The restructuring costs will not affect our adjusted EBITDA metric.

As some key operating metrics were used in slightly different ways by the two Companies, Equinix provided a reconciliation sheet on its web side for Switch and Data's recent quarter.

As far as revenues, Equinix hasn't really included any synergy in its forecast:

David Barden - BofA Merrill Lynch - Analyst

But no revenue synergies in the guidance at all?

Keith Taylor - Equinix Inc. - CFO

At this stage we haven't.

Clearly there is some expectation, again, as Steve alluded to, that we are already starting selling into their assets, and I understand from our sales team we are getting leads from the Switch and Data team into our (global) assets. So I think that there is going to be a strong opportunity for us. I think it will create some synergies, but we have not made that assumption today.

The combined business would be already in a position to generate about 1.8 billion of revenues, excluding further expansions that the now combined Company might need to take into consideration quickly:

Mark Adams - Equinix Inc. - Chief Development Officer

Yes, they actually, they do have a couple of projects that they have had under review, and we need to make decisions pretty much in the next 30 to 60 days, but given the commonality of the businesses and the markets we are focused on, they are projects we are very interested in, and we would like to pull right into our portfolio. So we see some good opportunities for expansion.

Uncaged: Direct Edge Bares its Exchanges

from Securities Technology Monitor:

>>In 2,500 square feet of space, you can house a typical Radio Shack store, with hundreds of electronic products, ranging from smart phones to car security systems to MP3 players to weather radios to cables and batteries.

Or, in roughly the same amount of space, you can house a stock exchange. Or two.

Such is the case with EDGA and EDGX, the two newly approved stock exchanges owned by Direct Edge, which formally debut Wednesday in Secaucus, N.J. As competition in securities trading venues goes up, so does the drive for speed and “scalability,’’ the ability to expand rapidly and reliably.

...

The economic benefits (see “Benefits, and Costs, in the Life of an Exchange”) and the prestige may be big factors. And the transformation of its alternative venues into full-fledged exchanges and the technology transformation that has gone with it may just be the price of keeping up with rivals.

...

Unlike the New York Stock Exchange, you won’t see a monster-sized flag draped over where Direct Edge operates the new trading platforms that will power EDGA and EDGX. The two exchanges sit side by side, in a black wire cage inside a nondescript industrial building that could just as easily hide a distribution warehouse.

Inside the cage are 80 racks of Hewlett-Packard ProLiant servers and related memory storage units. Anywhere from two to 14 servers sit in each rack. About 200 servers, per exchange. By H-P’s estimate, this generation of “convergent” servers -- which include processing capacity, mem ory storage, networking features and energy efficiency – puts the same amount of computing power in a single box as was found in 21 boxes four years ago.

Spare servers in this cage provide immediate backup, in case of failure. A second cage with copies of the entire EDGA and EDGX trading exchanges sits in another nondescript building in North New Jersey, just in case.

...

From the get-go, the new system will be able to handle 220,000 messages every second, while keeping up the pace of acknowledging each order in less than half a million. Each of the two exchanges can handle 2.5 billion transactions a day. “That is four times the capacity of even the days surrounding the Flash Crash,’’ said O’Brien. “So there is significant head room there.”

...

“There is no theoretical limit” to the amount of transactions Direct Edge will be able to handle each day, Bonanno said, at these speeds.

Lexus HS 250h – an Easy to Like Hybrid

from Canadafreepress.com:

>>Lexus HS 250h – an Easy to Like Hybrid

...

One thing that was pretty cool about the interior of my test HS was the Remote Touch feature, which comes with the optional navigation system. It’s a mouse-like cursor control thingy mounted on the center console, nicely at hand. It features a kind of force-feedback “detent” that lets you know by feel when you’ve moved the cursor over something clickable, which can help you keep your eyes on the road.

This Remote Touch is a lovely alternative to those knob-like cursor control thingies that are rearing their ugly heads in more and more cars these days and I hope it catches on. It may take up more real estate on the console than a knobby thing, and they need to work on the clunky on-screen interface, but I like it anyway.

Direct Edge's Trading Platforms Convert to Exchanges

from wallstreetandtech.com:

>>Direct Edge's Trading Platforms Convert to Exchanges

* EDGX, EDGA trading platforms convert to formal exchanges

* Direct Edge gains equal footing with NYSE, Nasdaq

* New exchanges' opening bell in Jersey City, New Jersey

---

The conversion brings new stock symbols to trading screens across the country and puts Direct Edge on equal footing with NYSE Euronext, Nasdaq OMX Group Inc and BATS Global Markets -- rivals it has aggressively and successfully taken on in the hyper competitive market for order flow.

Direct Edge Chief Executive William O'Brien said the company is not about to venture into unfamiliar territory with its exchange status, which means tighter regulatory oversight.

But he said a new data center launched during the conversion opens a new battle front with competitors in selling trading data to increasingly hungry investors.

"That's something we view as a way to broaden our competitive footprint," O'Brien said in an interview. "As great as this company has progressed so far, I still feel like it is still getting started."

Just hours before ringing the exchanges' opening bell in Jersey City Wednesday, O'Brien told Reuters Insider that Direct Edge "could potentially" list its shares in an initial public offering. The IPO plan was originally set for this year.

Toshiba New Sensation UI Solution

Direct Edge opens new front in battle for US market share

from finextra.com:

>>Direct Edge opens new front in battle for US market share

Direct Edge has opened a new front in the battle for US exchange market share by converting its two alternative trading systems into formal exchanges and completing the migration to a new technology platform.

Effective Wednesday, the EDGA and EDGX Exchanges are now trading all Tape A, B, and C symbols out of a new data centre at Equinix's NY4 facility in Secaucus, New Jersey.

Direct Edge Says IPO Possible as Its Markets Become Exchanges

from businessweek.com:

>>Direct Edge Says IPO Possible as Its Markets Become Exchanges

...

The company’s market share for equities trading this month was 8 percent, down 1.8 percentage points from last month, according to a Macquarie report. Bats, which accounted for 11.2 percent so far this month, surpassed Direct Edge’s volume in May and June. Direct Edge’s share of trading outpaced Bats in the second half of last year.

The decrease in market share this month is “acceptable,” O’Brien said. “It’s because of the enormity of the transition,” he said. “What we did is something no stock exchange has done before -- completely migrating its technology to a new platform and moving into a new data center at the same time.” Direct Edge this month moved its systems to a data center in Secaucus, New Jersey operated by Equinix Inc.

“We’re excited by our ability, with the new platform and technology architecture, to deliver new products that are innovative,” O’Brien said. “That will help Direct Edge stand out.”

Jeff's story

Regarding CyberKnife radiosurgery: “The treatment was wonderful. No side effects, no problems, and, per my urologist, no cancer,” said Jeff.
Click to read his story: http://cyberknife.com/all/jeff.aspx

CyberKnife::Jeff's Story

Jeff Hamilton, a NASA engineer and golf enthusiast, found himself working for the Apollo Space Program in Houston, Texas forty-five years ago. Jeff was involved in all of the Apollo/Saturn space launches up until the now infamous “Apollo 13” mission.

Opening of the New Chinese Data Center: Telehouse Shanghai

Telehouse expanding in China: same partner as Equinix.

>>Opening of the New Chinese Data Center: Telehouse Shanghai

On Monday, July 19, 2010 KDDI, Telehouse’ parent company will launch Telehouse Shanghai, providing colocation services in Shanghai, China. This will be KDDI's second Telehouse branded enterprise in China following the opening of Telehouse Beijing. This move will see Telehouse data centers branch out into 9 regions, 12 cities and cover 18 sites worldwide with a global footprint of approximately 113,000 square meters.

Telehouse Shanghai is a high spec data center constructed in Shanghai’s Pudong district in cooperation with Shanghai Data Solution Co., Ltd., a data center that provides redundancy related services via career diversity in Shanghai.

...

Equinix Extends Operations into China Through Partnership With Shanghai Data Solution (SDS)

Equinix selects SDS as its Data Center Partner to further support Equinix customers' colocation needs in Shanghai, P.R. China

Foster City, CA – March 23, 2010 – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), a provider of global data center services, today announced a strategic partnership agreement with Shanghai Data Solution Co., Ltd. (SDS), a leading systems integrator for network and communications services in Shanghai, P.R. China. The partnership allows Equinix customers to enjoy a similar level of availability and reliability of colocation services in China through the SDS data center, as they do within the 49 International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers operated by Equinix worldwide. The partnership provides Equinix with a strategic entry-way into one of the world’s most sought-after and fastest-growing markets: China.