Originally posted by Mer
Interloping
Thanks for the reply. Today's amazing has a habit of turning into tomorrow's commonplace, so to speak. I look forward to seeing what comes out of their collaboration with IIT and hope that WBT will soon have more partnerships with leading edge research. The applications for AI seem huge, take the push for driverless vehicles for instance, or maybe healthcare. AI feels like a technology that will constantly get redefined by what is possible.
Sometimes in technology, the standard gets defined by whatever can get there first and in volume. Yes, there are many places where WBT's tech could find a home, but it's a very competitive market. The earlier they can get their product into places that will gain recognition, the better. I wouldn't be surprised if getting into successful research partnerships now is the thing that gets them over the line later on. These projects take time to complete and ideally they'll be signed up now so that they come to fruition in a timely fashion. Conjecture, I know.
Cheers
Actually, in the tech industry neither being first nor being technically superior are requirements for success. Look at Apple, which has had repeated resounding successes by reworking a technology that had been kicking around for a long time - the ipod, the iphone and the ipad were all successful long after Creative Labs launched an mp3 player; several companies (most notably Blackberry) launched smart phones; and multiple attempts at portable touch-screen devices failed to gain traction.
Those, of course, are all consumer-facing examples that are strongly influenced by the "trendy" factor. But on the more technical side, successors to the floppy disc (the zip drive; the A drive; various rewritable optical media) are some examples of iterations in memory technologies that tried to fill an evolving need but failed to gain much traction until USB flash drives (with the possible partial exception of rewritable CDs - they gained traction, but technical limitations meant they never successfully replaced floppies).
So, like all those I have just named, WBT could certainly fade into obscurity. I've been extremely impressed, though, by the way Weebit as a company just quietly and without fanfare kicks goals - in contrast to drumming up a whole lot of hype and then delivering an underwhelming product. I think that is where the backgrounds in the industry of its founders really should speak volumes to the savvy investor. These are people who really know what they're doing, not people with histories in obscure companies associated with shady dealings. Not "Gold Coast" types that I would steer well away from in any spec investment.
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