InfoSpace.......in every space - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[zuendi]

von merrill lynch 07.11.00


InfoSpace
Locus Dialogue Acquisition:
New Capabilities for Voice Recognition



Locus Dialogue
InfoSpace yesterday announced the acquisition of Locus
Dialogue, a provider of speech recognition technologies and
speech-enabled applications, for approx. $130mm in stock
(4.3-5.5mm shares). We think voice-enablement is a critically
important capability for mobile internet (and for InfoSpace), as it
greatly expands the addressable market for enterprise and carriers
(esp. given that only about 50mm of the world’s 600mm+ cell phone
users are currently using internet-based applications).
InfoSpace will continue selling Locus Dialogue directly (and
indirectly) to enterprise, as well as use the technology to speech-enable
its portal offerings. As such, InfoSpace will compete with
both the voice interface software companies as well as the portals and
voice portals, both of which are very competitive markets. On the
software side, Locus Dialogue competes with Nuance, Speechworks,
Lernout and Hauspie as well as larger companies such as IBM,
Lucent Technologies, Philips Electronics, and Microsoft. On the
voice portal side, BeVocal and Tellme Networks are pitching
themselves as private label “vortals” for the carriers.
InfoSpace attributed its decision to buy vs. outsource the voice
technology to the following: a) owning the underlying technology is
necessary to fine tune its speech-enabled applications, and b) voice-enabling
software needs to be installed at the carrier center office in
order to control costs. (Voice portals have to pay for 800-number
access, for instance.) InfoSpace believes that through its carrier
relationships, it can sell the necessary software into the carriers.
InfoSpace expects to have its data applications voice-enabled within
3-6 months. InfoSpace will use the Locus Dialogue technology
to voice enable all its current products using an XML based
voice browser. (Voice-enabled services will include speech-activated
dialing, voice-accessable calendars, contact lists, to-do
lists and directions.) Additionally, Naveen Jain relayed his
vision that future value added voice services will include P2P
commerce, restaurant searches combined with promotional
deals, flight information, driving directions and speech
activated dialing.


Model Impact
The acquisition is expected to close in Q4 and will be
accounted for using purchase accounting. Because Locus
Dialogue has high research and development costs and low
revenues (as is common with most companies acquired
primarily for the underlying technology), the acquisition will
be $0.01 dilutive in each of the first 3Q’s of 2001 and is not
expected to become accretive until 2002. Heavier spending on
R&D should reduce operating margins to 13-14% of revenues
from previous guidance of 18% for 2001. (We would point
out that we find InfoSpace’s expectations relating to EPS to be
extremely conservative, so we would hope that $0.16 in 2001
EPS is readily achievable.)
Is voice-enablement a necessary enhancement or a new source
of revenues for the company? In our view, a little bit of both.
While InfoSpace has not yet signed any carrier-customers for speech-enabled
applications, the company also expects to raise 2001 and
2002 revenue estimates based on this acquisition. We agree that
speech enablement expands the addressable market. (Though as we
said, several providers are trying to be the carriers’ private label
portals.) We also think, however, that InfoSpace’s ability to sustain
$1-$2 per sub per month depends on enhancements such as speech—
enhancements that are already reflected in that pricing. At the end of
the day, we still do not have a great sense of usage patterns for
InfoSpace’s portal offerings, which we view as the most important
barometer of the business.

[zuendi]

WRHambrecht & Co zum INSPdeal:

INSP: LOCUS DIALOGUE ACQUISITION ADDS VOICE RECOGNITION TO INFOSPACE’S SUITE OF INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES


INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS
•Yesterday, November 6, 2000, InfoSpace announced the acquisition of Locus Dialogue,
which develops voice recognition technology, for roughly $100–$130 million. Locus
Dialogue’s voice recognition technology is a server-based technology that enables wireless
customers without WAP handsets to access Internet content and applications using voice
commands. Consideration for the deal is 4.3–5.5 million INSP shares, or roughly $100–$130
million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q4:00.
•Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology recognizes a user’s natural speech,
and supports multiple languages. Specific voice applications include 1) voice browsing
capabilities (based on voice XML); 2) text-to-speech technology; and 3) speech-activated
dialing. Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology has been deployed by Bell Canada, SBC
Communications, and Williams Communications Solutions.
•The acquisition should provide InfoSpace’s wireless carrier-customers with an
additional source of revenue from wireless data. At present, InfoSpace’s wireless carrier-customers
generate wireless data revenues by providing wireless Internet access to WAP
handsets. Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology should enable InfoSpace’s carrier-customers
to drive additional revenues by providing any wireless subscriber, with or without a
WAP handset, with Internet content via voice commands.
•Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology presents an additional interface to
InfoSpace’s wireless portal platform. At present, wireless carriers that are customers of
InfoSpace’s private-labeled portal platform can only provide their subscribers with access to the
InfoSpace-enabled portal via a desktop browser or WAP handset. Voice recognition presents an
additional interface, enabling subscribers to access all the applications included in InfoSpace’s
private-labeled portal platform, such as communication services (email and instant messaging);
PIM functions (online calendar, address book and to-do lists); and personalized content.
InfoSpace expects its full suite of portal applications to be voice-enabled within three to six
months.
•InfoSpace plans to drive additional ASP revenues from wireless carriers, similar to the
Company’s current $1–$2 per wireless Internet subscriber/per month revenue stream.
However, since the majority of a carrier’s wireless subscribers will not likely use voice
recognition services in the early stages of deployment, we expect InfoSpace to generate revenues
on a “per query” or “per transaction” basis, versus InfoSpace simply charging a wireless carrier
a fee for every one of the carrier’s wireless subscribers.
•Management expects the acquisition to be dilutive to 2001 cash EPS by roughly $0.03,
and accretive thereafter. InfoSpace does not expect material revenue contribution from the
acquisition until 2002. However, operating costs (primarily product development) are expected
to reduce InfoSpace’s 2001 operating margins to 13-14% from previous guidance in the high-teens,
which should dilute cash EPS by roughly $0.03. As a result, we have lowered our
operating margin estimate to 14% from 19% and our cash EPS estimate to $0.13 from $0.17
(slightly more than the $0.03 dilution guidance, due to rounding).
•We reiterate our Buy rating and $33 price target. We continue to believe InfoSpace’s
private-label portal licensing model is extremely well positioned to benefit from the growth of
wireless and broadband Internet services. To the degree that InfoSpace shows a significant
ramp in wireless revenues in Q4:00, and can generate enough interest in voice-based services,
we believe upside potential in INSP shares could be recognized in the relative near term.

[zuendi]

WRHambrecht & Co zum INSPdeal:

INSP: LOCUS DIALOGUE ACQUISITION ADDS VOICE RECOGNITION TO INFOSPACE’S SUITE OF INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES


INVESTMENT HIGHLIGHTS
•Yesterday, November 6, 2000, InfoSpace announced the acquisition of Locus Dialogue,
which develops voice recognition technology, for roughly $100–$130 million. Locus
Dialogue’s voice recognition technology is a server-based technology that enables wireless
customers without WAP handsets to access Internet content and applications using voice
commands. Consideration for the deal is 4.3–5.5 million INSP shares, or roughly $100–$130
million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q4:00.
•Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology recognizes a user’s natural speech,
and supports multiple languages. Specific voice applications include 1) voice browsing
capabilities (based on voice XML); 2) text-to-speech technology; and 3) speech-activated
dialing. Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology has been deployed by Bell Canada, SBC
Communications, and Williams Communications Solutions.
•The acquisition should provide InfoSpace’s wireless carrier-customers with an
additional source of revenue from wireless data. At present, InfoSpace’s wireless carrier-customers
generate wireless data revenues by providing wireless Internet access to WAP
handsets. Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology should enable InfoSpace’s carrier-customers
to drive additional revenues by providing any wireless subscriber, with or without a
WAP handset, with Internet content via voice commands.
•Locus Dialogue’s voice recognition technology presents an additional interface to
InfoSpace’s wireless portal platform. At present, wireless carriers that are customers of
InfoSpace’s private-labeled portal platform can only provide their subscribers with access to the
InfoSpace-enabled portal via a desktop browser or WAP handset. Voice recognition presents an
additional interface, enabling subscribers to access all the applications included in InfoSpace’s
private-labeled portal platform, such as communication services (email and instant messaging);
PIM functions (online calendar, address book and to-do lists); and personalized content.
InfoSpace expects its full suite of portal applications to be voice-enabled within three to six
months.
•InfoSpace plans to drive additional ASP revenues from wireless carriers, similar to the
Company’s current $1–$2 per wireless Internet subscriber/per month revenue stream.
However, since the majority of a carrier’s wireless subscribers will not likely use voice
recognition services in the early stages of deployment, we expect InfoSpace to generate revenues
on a “per query” or “per transaction” basis, versus InfoSpace simply charging a wireless carrier
a fee for every one of the carrier’s wireless subscribers.
•Management expects the acquisition to be dilutive to 2001 cash EPS by roughly $0.03,
and accretive thereafter. InfoSpace does not expect material revenue contribution from the
acquisition until 2002. However, operating costs (primarily product development) are expected
to reduce InfoSpace’s 2001 operating margins to 13-14% from previous guidance in the high-teens,
which should dilute cash EPS by roughly $0.03. As a result, we have lowered our
operating margin estimate to 14% from 19% and our cash EPS estimate to $0.13 from $0.17
(slightly more than the $0.03 dilution guidance, due to rounding).
•We reiterate our Buy rating and $33 price target. We continue to believe InfoSpace’s
private-label portal licensing model is extremely well positioned to benefit from the growth of
wireless and broadband Internet services. To the degree that InfoSpace shows a significant
ramp in wireless revenues in Q4:00, and can generate enough interest in voice-based services,
we believe upside potential in INSP shares could be recognized in the relative near term.

[venturecapital]

Goldman Sachs analyst Vik Mehta lowered 2001 EPS estimate for InfoSpace, Inc. (INSP) to $0.15 from $0.17, the stock is rated a Market Outperformer

[venturecapital]

Goldman Sachs analyst Vik Mehta lowered 2001 EPS estimate for InfoSpace, Inc. (INSP) to $0.15 from $0.17, the stock is rated a Market Outperformer

[venturecapital]

More Elbow Room
Net Stock Trading Tips
Tues, 11/7/00-9:19 PM by Margot M. Amberg

There doesn`t seem to be a finality to the InfoSpace (INSP: news, msgs) frontier, and the company`s purchase of Locus Dialogue gives it even further room to stretch.
This new acquisition comes on the heels of the completed merger of Go2Net, Inc., first announced in July. Go2Net brought with it a variety of content offerings as well as the venues that accessed it - including broadband and wireless service providers.

InfoSpace is segmented into four service businesses: wireless, wireline, merchant and broadband. While it does offer its own informational portal as well as the Web properties of Go2Net directly to consumers, the company excels at providing private-labeled informational content and application services for over 3,100 Web sites across all platforms. Web sites powered by InfoSpace include America Online (AOL: news, msgs), Microsoft `s (MSFT: news, msgs) MSN Network, Terra Lycos (TRLY) and NBCI Internet (NBCI: news, msgs). Consumer-oriented content includes yellow and white pages, maps and directions, news, classifieds, stock quotes and other financial information, instant messaging and message boards, games and entertainment, and search functions. A shopping comparison service was recently enhanced in a collaboration with Clickthebutton.com, which will provide a proprietary price comparison data base. Personalizable productivity products which create consumer "stickiness" include calendar, address books, and "to-do" lists.

For merchants, the company offers set-up tools, such as store building products, domain name registration, digital certificates, and other e-commerce enabling functions, including advertising and targeting features. The firm offers these services directly, but also through numerous reseller avenues.

InfoSpace`s content, e-commerce and communication infrastructure services are scalable across a wide range of platforms, besides the ubiquitous PC. The services are also presented through pagers, television, online kiosks, PDAs, screen telephones, and the like. InfoSpace is also rapidly expanding worldwide, especially into the European and Asian markets.

The company has focused on wireless platform delivery of its services, which supports the variety of protocols, including WAP and SMS. A recent coverage initiation report issued by First Security Van Kasper placed the company in the dominant position in the category, citing the company`s arrangements with 88% of all current wireless carriers. First Security started the firm with a buy and a near-term price target of $32. InfoSpace`s wireless communication partners in this area include Verizon Comminications (VZ: news, msgs), AT&T Corp. (T: news, msgs), VoiceStream Wireless Corporation (VSTR: news, msgs) and Quest Communications International (Q), and device makers include Nokia Corporation (NOK: news, msgs), Intel Corporation (INTC: news, msgs), Ericsson (ERICY: news, msgs) andMotorola (MOT: news, msgs).

The acquisition of Locus will provide an important component to their broad-ranging wireless strategy, and InfoSpace may have just nabbed a jewel in this fast growing field. The firm`s speech-enabled technologies can be scaled across a wide variety of uses. The basic telephone application allows users of many languages to access information provided by InfoSpace. This voice-activated feature is anticipated to be extended to other consumer applications as well. There`s also a commercial angle to the technology, in that businesses can tailor the product to suit their employees` informational access needs. Telecommunication providers currently using the company`s technology in their distributed products include SBC Communications (SBC: news, msgs), Bell Canada International (BCICF: news, msgs) and Williams Communications Group(WCG: news, msgs) – this is a natural additional offering for InfoSpace`s partner mobile carriers. The deal is expected to close during this quarter. InfoSpace will issue approximately 4.3 million to 5.5 million shares of its common stock, to be determined at the time of completion.

Competition in the area includes many of the same affiliates to which InfoSpace provides content - and these include AOL, MSN, NBCI and others as they leap into the wireless and broadband arena with their own branded offerings. Especially to watch is AOL, which will gain much additional proprietary content through its merger with Time Warner (TWX: news, msgs). In effect, however, InfoSpace would stand to gain as long as these services continue to use its products. Those outside the InfoSpace loop include Yahoo! (YHOO: news, msgs), Inktomi (INKT: news, msgs) and infoUSA (IUSA), which mainly gears its content and marketing offerings towards the business segment. Its merchant offering is also swamped with players, but the firm does offer broad exposure.

InfoSpace seems to be firing on all cylinders, and it has done a good job of positioning itself in earning revenues from a wide variety of transactions and partners by staying in the background. This is one firm to especially watch as wireless applications take off.

Margot M. Amberg is a freelance financial writer who has followed and invested in Internet-related stocks since 1996. She was formerly a general partner and managing director of a NY-based hedge fund.

Disclosure: Author is long AOL.

[Inter nett]

4 Beiträge werden aber nicht angezeigt........... :-(

[HG1]

Infospace bringt das Internet auf das Handy

Der frühere Vodafone-Manager Arun Sarin will mit seiner Firma InfoSpace neue Internetdienste über das Mobiltelefon anbieten.Dazu sucht er auch in Europa Partner und übernimmt kleinere Spezialanbieter.Trotz eines Kurseinbruches empfehlen Analysten das Papier weiterhin.

Handelsblatt,8.11.2000:

Die US-Internetfirma InfoSpace verhandelt in Europa mit mehreren Telekomfirmen über den Aufbau gemeinsamer Handy-Internetdienste.In Grossbritanien wird der vor einem Jahr von Richard Branson gegründte Mobilfunkanbieter Virigin Mobile der erste Partner.InfoSpace-Chef Arun Sarin bestätigte im Gespräch mit dem Handelsblatt sein Unternehmen stehe auch mit der Deutschen Telekom in Kontakt: "Wir sprechen mit allen in Europa".Partner von Virign Mobile ist One-2-One,die britische Mobilfunktochter der Deutschen Telekom.

InfoSpace ist der weltweit führende Anbieter von Internet-Infrastruktur.Das Unternehmen mit Sitz in Bele-vue/Washington baut für Anbieter im Internet die Web-Seiten individuell zusammen.Bislang steht InfoSpace hinter mehr als 3.100 Internetseiten,in Europa sind es rund 160 Seiten."Nur da klebt dann ein anderer Markennamen wie AOL oder MSN drauf",erklärt Sarin.Zudem tritt seine Firma auch als Konkurrent der Provider an und bietet eine breite Onlinehandel-Palette-von Landkarten und Gelben Seiten bis Jobbörse und Finanzinformationen.
Stark ausgebaut werden soll die Internetnutzung über das Handy,so Sarin.Im Gegensatz zu den Web-Seiten für den PC-Gebrauch sind dazu nationale Telekom-Partner nötig.In Europa sei das Ziel,bei fast 90% aller Internet-Nutzungen über das Handy im Hintergrund zu wirken.Damit tritt er in harten Wettbewerb zum US-Softwareriesen Microsoft,der ebenfalls mit Telekomfirmen in Europa Internetdienste in Europa aufbauen und bereits mit Firmen wie British Telcom und Vodafone verhandelt.
Allerdings unterscheiden sich nach Ansicht von Sarin die Konzepte.Provider wie AOL oder Yahoo! würden im Prinzip nur versuchen,ihre Internetseiten vom Computer über das Handy zu übertragen."Dies wird nicht funktionieren",sagt der 45jährige,der lange als Nachfolger von Vodafone-Chef Chris Gent galt.InfoSpace wolle völlig neue Dienste aufbauen.InfoSpace will Surfen auf dem Handy mittels Sprache möglich machgen.Das kleine Telefon soll auf Abfrage Börsenkurse oder Nachrichten vorlesen können."Automatisch in der richtigen Sprache",kündigt Sarin an.Sein Unternehmen hat dafür vor wenigen Tagen die auf Spracherkennung spezialisierte Locus Dialoque aus Montreal für 113 Millionen US-Dollar gekauft.
Erst im Juli hatte InfoSpace für rund 4 Milliarden US-Dollar den US-Internetdienst Go2Net übernommen und damit seinen Online-Handel stark ausgebaut.
Sarin will weiter Firmen übernehmen."Wir haben die Taschen voller Geld",sagt Sarin mi Blick auf die Marktkapitalsierung von 6 Milliarden US-Dollar und einem erwarteten Umsatz von 200 Millionen US-Dollar in diesem Jahr.
Allerdings ist der InfoSpace Kurs in den letzten Monaten stark eingebrochen.Dennoch haben Analysten von Merrill Lynch den Wert empfohlen."Die Musik spielt derzeit im Infrastrukturbereich",so Merrill-Experten,die für Firmen wie InfoSpace jährliche Wachstumsraten zwischen 30 und 50% voraussagen.Allerdings warnen sie auch: InfoSpace sei durchaus als spekulativer Wert einzuschätzen.

Auf die New-Economy-Schmiede setzt auch der saudische Prinz Al-Waleed bin Talal.Mitte Mai steckte der erfolgsgewohnte Multi-Milliardär 50 Millionen US-Dollar in InfoSpace.Da war die Aktie noch gut 60 US-Dollar wert,heute liegt sie gerade mal bei 23 US-Dollar.Zu Hochzeitn kostete sie 138 US-Dollar.Firmenchef Sarin :"Unser Kurs ist klar unterbewertet".Das werde sich ändern: InfoSpace gehöre zu den wenigen jungen Internet-Schmieden die Gewinne machen.Im letzten Quartal waren es 9,5 Millionen US-Dollar

[zuendi]

ROBERTSON STEPHENS, 10.11.00

INFOSPACE EXTENDS PLATFORM, MARKET WITH ACQUISITION OF LOCUS

InfoSpace plans to acquire Locus Dialogue, a leading provider of speech-recognition technology. The transaction is valued at between $104 million and $133 million, which is subject to pricing changes upon closing, expected during Q4. With the addition of Locus Dialogue`s applications, such as automatic speech recognition, natural language understanding, speaker identification and text-to-speech server technology, InfoSpace will be able to offer an unmatched suite of services to potential affiliates and merchants, in our view. Importantly, the acquisition signifies InfoSpace`s entry into speech-recognition technology, the critical next medium for wireless services. Existing wireless services such as personalized information, location-based services and mCommerce could be voice-enabled by this deal, which also gives InfoSpace access to a broader audience--all wireless phone users, not just those who are WAP-enabled. In a conference call, management said that although guidance for 2001 EPS is lower due to increased operating expenses and slight dilution of shares, it expects wireless revenue to increase due to higher demand from carriers. With continued momentum in wireless services key for InfoSpace, we believe its entry into speech recognition technology represents a positive investment in its platform.

[zuendi]

Naveen Jain Is the Greatest High-Tech Entrepreneur of All Human History


(And if you don`t believe it, just ask him.)


Naveen Jain is sneezing like a horse, in sympathy with the Seattle rain running down his office window. The chairman and founder of InfoSpace is suffering from the flu and a 101-degree fever, yet he is still putting in 16-hour days building his wireless Web company and fielding my questions late into the evening. Then, instead of going home, he takes me to the aptly named Moghul Palace for dinner ("Bill Gates`s favorite," he tells me), and keeps on talking and sneezing right through the lentils and the vegetable masala. "I believe will-power can get you through anything," he says. After dinner, at around 10, he drops me off at my car -- and goes back to the office.


"He is one of the few people I know who works more than me," says Arun Sarin, whom Jain badgered into quitting his former job in charge of U.S. and Asian operations for the telecom titan Vodafone to become CEO of InfoSpace last spring. "I get e-mails from him at 4 a.m., and I wonder, `Do you have a family?` " Jain, who is 41, does in fact have a wife and three kids, but he spends more time with InfoSpace -- his "fourth child," as he puts it.


It doesn`t take long to see that Jain is his own biggest fan. He likens InfoSpace`s position today to that of Microsoft back when it was the preferred distribution platform for applications on the PC. "Everybody comes to us with cool new stuff," he says. "We can acquire them or partner with them because we have access to the carriers. That is called being the center of the universe."


Such bombast may be characteristic of your typical dotcom billionaire, but this guy has it down to a science. Consider a few classic Jainisms: "The wireless Internet is probably the most explosive growth area in the history of any technology ever" (the implication being that InfoSpace will be the most explosive growth stock ever). "We invented the concept of a private-label solution on the Internet" (Inktomi, which provides search and comparison-shopping technology to other websites, might disagree). "We are the only company on the planet that can insert itself into off-line commerce" (he means the only Internet company, but even so, any traditional retailer with a Web presence would take issue with him). And then there`s his modest contention that InfoSpace will become the first company to reach a trillion-dollar market cap. (This despite the fact that its stock, after a spectacular 6,842 percent run-up between its December 1998 IPO and March of this year, when it reached $130, recently found itself near $20. As of press time in late October, the company`s market cap was hovering near $5 billion, down from $28 billion.)


"Naveen gets misunderstood a lot," asserts Joni Hanson, his VP for marketing. "People love to hate him." Yet he can actually be quite charming. In the parking garage, on our way to Moghul Palace, he addresses the attendant by name -- how many billionaires can do that? A very astute surveyor of the technology landscape, he wins people over by the sheer force of his personality and intellect. "Simply sell yourself as one smart son of a bitch," he says, "and whatever youare selling will sell itself." Beneath all the bragging and strutting, the man comes across as someone who genuinely cares about his business and about helping to build an industry from scratch.

Even making (considerable) allowances for Jainist hyperbole, it`s hard to disagree that the man has a plan -- and a good one. He may in fact have a shot at powering a sizable portion of the wireless Web, getting paid for each cell phone that accesses it through InfoSpace software, and taking a piece of each purchase he squires through. At its core, InfoSpace`s business is about providing people with relevant information pieced together from different sources, regardless of whether they`re using a PC, a cell phone, or an interactive TV. InfoSpace`s server software allows it to tailor the experience to the device; its database technology allows the company to integrate multiple pieces of software or streams of data so they act as a single application. For instance, in a recent demonstration of what its software is capable of, InfoSpace showed how if you receive an e-mail on your phone asking you to meet a client in Los Angeles, you can check your calendar, book a flight, and pay for the ticket with your credit card with a few clicks on your cell-phone keypad. InfoSpace`s technology, which knows who and where you are, works in the background, coordinating all the relevant databases and Web servers to give you the information you need. Wireless carriers that don`t want to bother with all this software infrastructure can simply outsource it to Jain, and pay him $1 to $2 per subscriber per month for the privilege.

By Merrill Lynch`s best guess, 1 billion people worldwide will access the Web from a cell phone by 2005. If InfoSpace does in fact become the operating system for the wireless Web, Jain`s current swagger, in retrospect, will look timid. He`s not quite there yet, however. The bulk of his business is still on the plain old wired Web, providing content and services such as phone directories, search engines, comparison-shopping software, instant messaging, maps, calendars, and address books to 3,200 websites. The other part of his business is pairing this content with ads from 2 million local businesses nationwide, thanks to partnerships with regional phone companies, merchant banks, and local newspapers. InfoSpace`s stock has been hit, in part, because of concerns over the slowdown in Internet advertising, which made up an estimated quarter of the company`s $58 million in revenue for the third quarter. The $48 million loss (albeit mostly acquisition-related) doesn`t help matters either.


But the future of InfoSpace, Jain says, lies in extending all of these services to cell phones and other wireless devices (as well as broadband devices, which is why he just acquired Go2Net for $1.5 billion). Consummate dealmakers, Jain and Sarin have already struck partnerships with more than 20 wireless carriers around the globe -- including AT&T Wireless, SBC, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone, among others -- which collectively serve some 70 million subscribers. Most of those agreements are just starter deals to provide, say, calendars and address books that are legible on small screens. But Jain hopes the carriers will eventually outsource to InfoSpace the entire universe of Internet options that subscribers can access from their cell phones. Right now, for example, he`s hell-bent on turning your cell phone into a wallet, so you can split a restaurant bill with a friend, say, and pay your half by sending money from your cell phone to hers. (Jain, of course, wants to take a percentage of each transaction.) He also wants to link your wallet to those 2 million local businesses for whom he already displays banner ads, so they can send electronic coupons to your phone and then track whether you actually make a purchase. "If 90 percent of the money is being spent at physical locations outside the PC," he figures, "then you need to insert yourself where the money is being spent -- off-line." And, no surprise, he doesn`t want to stop there. "A cell phone should act like a credit card, a PDA [personal digital assistant], a pager, a remote control." The list goes on.


All that is down the road. But if InfoSpace has a long way to go, Jain isn`t striking any submissive postures. (At Sarin`s request, however, he has refrained lately from predicting that trillion-dollar market cap.) Instead, Jain patrols the hallways of InfoSpace HQ -- dotted with soothing yellow conference rooms, red and blue offices, and comfy worker-recuperation pods -- in his standard jeans, sweatshirt, and tube socks, checking in with lieutenants on the status of deals, spewing ideas, and plotting incessantly. He leaves the daily tending of the business to Sarin, who is as precise and smooth as Jain is manic. Because the bulk of InfoSpace`s revenues are expected to come -- eventually -- from wireless, Sarin, a highly respected executive who helped build Airtouch Cellular, and later Vodafone, was a logical choice to come in to steer the ship. And while Jain has clashed before with professional management brought in to impose order on InfoSpace, he and Sarin seem to have settled easily into complementary roles: Jain dreams up ideas for new products and acquisitions, and Sarin chooses the best of them -- and tries to contain the chaos emanating from his chairman.


Naveen drinks a lot of coffee," remarks Kevin Marcus, InfoSpace`s chief software architect. "If you didn`t know any better, you`d think he does amphetamines. He projects this random-energy feeling, which really is focused. But you can`t tell sometimes."


Jain`s restlessness has a long history. When he was growing up in India, his father was a civil engineer working for the government. The family moved to a new city every two years. "We never had a place to call home," Jain recalls, "so I learned to deal with change." After receiving an engineering degree and a master`s in business by the time he was 22, he moved to the States. Eventually, Jain wound up at Microsoft, where he managed MSN (originally conceived as a dial-up service like CompuServe or Prodigy). Brad Silverberg, the former Microsoft executive who oversaw Jain`s group and now invests in wireless startups through his holding company, Ignition, remembers him as "kind of like he is now: exuberant, full of ideas, talked really fast."


Jain may have been full of ideas at Microsoft, but corporate culture was not for him. So he quit in 1996 to start InfoSpace. "Running his own company is the right thing for Naveen," says Silverberg. Another colleague fromthose days is blunter: "His success was unexpected. There was so much respect at Microsoft for deep strategists, and Naveen could not be more different. It makes us reevaluate him and what he`s done."

If Jain`s success is now greeted with wonderment by some of his erstwhile Microsoft cronies, Jain himself seems to have no trouble explaining it. In all earnestness he declares, "I know I can get any deal done because I can always outsmart the person across the table." Jain never prepares a script for meetings or speeches, so he can more easily adapt to the situation at hand. That kind of self-reliance serves him well, for the most part, but as Jain says, "people don`t know how to distinguish between confidence and arrogance." According to him, if somebody finds him arrogant, they must suffer from low self-esteem; if they think him merely confident, their self-esteem is intact. Thus, jujitsu-like, Jain`s arrogance becomes someone else`s character defect.

Those who know Jain describe him not only as arrogant but also as "outlandish," "a maniac," and "Naveen-centric." And those are the people who like him. "I have been accused of everything in my life," he concedes, "except I have never been called stupid." He has, let it be said, called other people just that. In fact, it seems to be a favorite negotiating tactic. Jain tells the story of a meeting he once had with the CEO of a large publishing house in Manhattan that was looking for a way to distribute its content on the Web. This CEO -- short and stern -- suggested to Jain that websites should be designed a certain way. Instead of nodding politely, Jain blurted out, "That is so stupid!" Then he spent the next 15 minutes explaining to the stony-faced CEO exactly why his suggestion would never work. Afterward, as Jain walked out, he asked one of the CEO`s underlings how he thought the meeting had gone. "How did it go? You just called my boss stupid," sputtered the exasperated junior achiever. The next day Jain got a call. The publisher was ready to sign. "I have a great gift for telling people they are stupid," Jain explains, "and they don`t really think I mean it."


Jain sometimes likens being an entrepreneur to being "a cult leader," and he does somehow manage to convert even the most unlikely of followers. Back in 1996, software architect Kevin Marcus was still an undergraduate and had created a popular free e-mail directory for the Web. When Jain decided to get into that business, Marcus called him up, incensed that anyone would try to commercialize the Web. Jain was about to go to San Francisco on business, and talked Marcus into meeting him at the Hilton. As Jain tells it, he arrived to find a kid sitting at the bar with steam coming out of his ears. "I am going to kill you!" Marcus told Jain, to which Jain calmly responded, "Kevin, why don`t we have a beer? You can kill me later." By 2:30 a.m., Jain had won him over. The next day, Marcus was on his way to Seattle.


InfoSpace`s individual technologies are not necessarily the best, but the fact that they all work together -- theoretically, at least -- gives the company a competitive edge. To the extent that Jain can acquire or partner with companies that possess key technologies, he is staying one step ahead of his competitors. Since InfoSpace went public two years ago, Jain has masterminded nine acquisitions, including Saraide (whose wireless services gave InfoSpace instant credibility in Europe, where wireless is more established), IQOrder (which allows you to punch a bar-code number into your cell phone and comparison-shop right in a store), and most recently Go2Net (whose expertise in broadband and online gaming further extends InfoSpace`s reach).


The big question now is this: Can Jain integrate all these businesses, keep focused on the Web and wireless, and expand into broadband? And make a profit? Most analysts on Wall Street think he can. He surprised them this quarter by reporting a pro forma profit of $9.5 million, which doesn`t include acquisition-related and other supposedly one-time charges. The consensus is that InfoSpace should be able to stay in the black, at least on a pro forma basis, for the foreseeable future. Of the 18 analysts who cover the stock, all have either a buy or a strong-buy rating -- and bear in mind that this is a time when analysts are not shy about downgrading Internet stocks. To his credit, Jain has assembled a very impressive management team, including Sarin, Go2Net`s former CEO Russ Horowitz, who is now InfoSpace`s president, and head of engineering Russ Arun, who used to be Jain`s boss atMicrosoft. And a good thing too. The time has come to shift from sowing thousands of seeds helter-skelter to harvesting the deals that have already been planted -- a task requiring considerable patience.

In a way, Jain`s greatest strength -- dealmaking prowess -- may also be his Achilles` heel. At InfoSpace there is no such thing as a bad deal. The mentality until recently has largely been to get `em done and move on. So far, this has worked well: The 20 carriers InfoSpace does business with give it a seemingly unassailable position. But now those relationships need to be nurtured and milked for all they`re worth. That sort of detail-oriented work is not Jain`s strong suit. He has a reputation for doing deals on a handshake, then leaving others to clean up after him, and at least once this technique has come back to haunt him. Last year, InfoSpace settled two lawsuits totaling $15 million with former employees who said they were promised options they never got. InfoSpace had to acknowledge in its 1999 annual report that "primarily during our early stage of development, our procedures with respect to the manner of granting options to new employees were not clearly documented." Oops.

If anything truly rankles about Jain`s style of ceaseless promotion, it`s his own haste to off-load the company`s stock. Over the past two years, he has reduced his stake from 48 percent ownership to 22 percent, which netted him about $400 million. Last May, in an interview for another story, Jain told me, "Forget the story, go out and buy the stock!" That outburst seemed a little cheeky coming from a guy who had dumped $110 million worth of the stuff in January and had filed 10 days earlier to sell another $100 million worth. When I bring this up at Moghul Palace, Jain retorts across a plate of nan, "Ninety-five percent of my portfolio is in one holding." He adds that he and his wife recently exercised options to buy 2 million shares. "It was simple diversification," he continues. "You can`t criticize me until you put 95 percent of your net worth into InfoSpace." That`s a non-response, of course. Setting aside the fact that his stake in InfoSpace (now about $1 billion, down from $8 billion in March) is at most 70 percent of his net worth, I`m not out there hyping the stock. It`s so late in the evening, though, I can`t muster a retort. But that`s probably a self-esteemthing.


(c) eCompany.com

[Fra Diabolo]

habe heute morgen meine Position um ungefähr 25% vergrössert und nun einen durchschnittlichen Einstandspreis von ca. 18.

der Markt wirds uns zeigen.

FD

[TomNovy]

Vorbörslich auf 20,5 $

[buckweiser]

Buckweiser Infospace-Analyse unter http://www.myresearch.de/cgi-bin/myresearch.cgi?AC=2001&B=0&…

[HUANTO]

Die Präsidentenwahl hat uns den schoenen Ausbruch zunichte gemacht.Aber so sind die Amerikaner:immer auf dem neusten technischen Stand; aber wenn sie mal ein paar Stimmzettel auszählen müssen,erleiden sie Schiffbruch. Eigentlich sollte man den ganzen US-Dreck verkaufen und in Asien investieren- die koennen wenigstens zählen!! Ein enttäuschter Infospaceinvestor!

[AndererKostolany]

Hallo, ich sehe keinen Grund diese Aktie zu kaufen!!

KUV 30.....KGV 600.............????????

[elwood2000]

An andererKostolany,

bitte verschone uns mit solch profanen Statements. Wenn Du schon irgendwas reinstellst, dann lies Dir zuvor ein paar Fakts durch:

Ínfospace hat allein im letzten Quartal 150 Mio. USD umgestzt und 0,02 Cents pro Aktie verdient.

Das macht dann für nächstes Jahr folgende Kennzahlen (sehr, sehr konservativ ):

KUV 8, KGV bei geschätzten 17 Cents: 120 .

Dabei ist nicht viel wachstum eingerechnet.

Dann sieht man sich noch das Management an. Ein ehemaliger Vodafone-Vorstand und ein hohes Tier von Goldman Sachs.

Ich glaube an die story. Lasst Euch nicht von den AMis ärgern. Politische Börsen hatten schon immer kurze Beine. In ein paar Wochen sieht die welt schon anders aus. Außerdem würde von uns zur Zeit eh keiner verkaufen. Wir erhoffen uns doch ganz andere Kurse als 30 oder 40 USD. Also was solls. So wird die sache nur ein wenig hinausgezögert und in der Zwischenzeit vergeht für INSP wieder ein Bombemquartal. Bleibt cool und schaut Euch am 24.12. Euer Depot wieder an:-DDDD. Dann werde alle INSp bei 50 USD noch für ein Schnäppchen halten und noch 200% Luft nach oben sehen. Ein neuer Hype beginnt....

[buckweiser]

Du wolltest wohl 57 und nicht 150 Mill. im letzten Quartal sagen, oder

[zuendi]

Compaq to Use InfoSpace Wireless Internet Platform for iPAQ Pocket PC and iPAQ BlackBerry Devices

BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP), a leading global provider of cross-platform merchant and consumer infrastructure services on wireless, broadband, and narrowband platforms, today announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) to extend its wireless Internet platform of customizable content and services to Compaq`s popular iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC and the iPAQ BlackBerry(TM) Wireless Email Solution. These wireless services will be part of iPAQnet(TM) -- Compaq`s rich suite of email and Internet access solutions, content and Web-based services announced this week at Fall COMDEX in Las Vegas.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000420/INFOLOGO )

Together, the Compaq iPAQ offerings and InfoSpace wireless Internet platform will create a comprehensive solution targeted toward the rapidly growing enterprise market. This solution will also provide enterprise employees with applications and content that will enable them to do their jobs more efficiently, as well as customize services and content that are specific to their areas of interest or expertise.

The iPAQ Pocket PC, a robust pocket-sized PC with unprecedented functionality, is Compaq`s most popular handheld product ever. Launched in April of this year, the award-winning, highly successful iPAQ Pocket PC signaled Compaq`s commitment to developing simple, anywhere, any time Internet access devices. Meanwhile, the Compaq iPAQ BlackBerry is the always on, always connected wireless email solution from the leader in enterprise messaging solutions. With iPAQ BlackBerry, users can read, originate, forward and reply to e-mail messages while on the move. The market for such devices is rapidly expanding, as analysts predict that by 2003, more people will access the Internet through wireless devices than PCs (Jupiter Communications).

"We`re thrilled to extend InfoSpace`s best-of-breed infrastructure services to users of Compaq`s iPAQ Pocket PC and iPAQ BlackBerry offerings," said Arun Sarin, InfoSpace CEO. "We look forward to building upon our relationship with Compaq to further deploy our infrastructure technologies and services across multiple platforms and devices, enabling people to more effectively communicate, collaborate, conduct commerce and manage their lives any time, anywhere, and on any device."

"InfoSpace`s platform of services is uniquely suited to provide our mobile customers with a powerful wireless Internet experience," said Ted Clark, Vice President, Marketing, Portable PC Division, Compaq Computer Corporation. "We look forward to working with InfoSpace as we continue to offer customers a quantum leap in productivity with industry-leading wireless Internet solutions."

[Indian Summer]

http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/0,1640,8833,00.html


Naveen Jain Is the Greatest High-Tech Entrepreneur of All Human History

Naveen Jain is sneezing like a horse, in sympathy with the Seattle rain running down his office window. The chairman and founder of InfoSpace is suffering from the flu and a 101-degree fever, yet he is still putting in 16-hour days building his wireless Web company and fielding my questions late into the evening. Then, instead of going home, he takes me to the aptly named Moghul Palace for dinner ("Bill Gates`s favorite," he tells me), and keeps on talking and sneezing right through the lentils and the vegetable masala. "I believe will-power can get you through anything," he says. After dinner, at around 10, he drops me off at my car -- and goes back to the office.

"He is one of the few people I know who works more than me," says Arun Sarin, whom Jain badgered into quitting his former job in charge of U.S. and Asian operations for the telecom titan Vodafone to become CEO of InfoSpace last spring. "I get e-mails from him at 4 a.m., and I wonder, `Do you have a family?` " Jain, who is 41, does in fact have a wife and three kids, but he spends more time with InfoSpace -- his "fourth child," as he puts it.

It doesn`t take long to see that Jain is his own biggest fan. He likens InfoSpace`s position today to that of Microsoft back when it was the preferred distribution platform for applications on the PC. "Everybody comes to us with cool new stuff," he says. "We can acquire them or partner with them because we have access to the carriers. That is called being the center of the universe."

Such bombast may be characteristic of your typical dotcom billionaire, but this guy has it down to a science. Consider a few classic Jainisms: "The wireless Internet is probably the most explosive growth area in the history of any technology ever" (the implication being that InfoSpace will be the most explosive growth stock ever). "We invented the concept of a private-label solution on the Internet" (Inktomi, which provides search and comparison-shopping technology to other websites, might disagree). "We are the only company on the planet that can insert itself into off-line commerce" (he means the only Internet company, but even so, any traditional retailer with a Web presence would take issue with him). And then there`s his modest contention that InfoSpace will become the first company to reach a trillion-dollar market cap. (This despite the fact that its stock, after a spectacular 6,842 percent run-up between its December 1998 IPO and March of this year, when it reached $130, recently found itself near $20. As of press time in late October, the company`s market cap was hovering near $5 billion, down from $28 billion.)

"Naveen gets misunderstood a lot," asserts Joni Hanson, his VP for marketing. "People love to hate him." Yet he can actually be quite charming. In the parking garage, on our way to Moghul Palace, he addresses the attendant by name -- how many billionaires can do that? A very astute surveyor of the technology landscape, he wins people over by the sheer force of his personality and intellect. "Simply sell yourself as one smart son of a bitch," he says, "and whatever youare selling will sell itself." Beneath all the bragging and strutting, the man comes across as someone who genuinely cares about his business and about helping to build an industry from scratch.

Even making (considerable) allowances for Jainist hyperbole, it`s hard to disagree that the man has a plan -- and a good one. He may in fact have a shot at powering a sizable portion of the wireless Web, getting paid for each cell phone that accesses it through InfoSpace software, and taking a piece of each purchase he squires through. At its core, InfoSpace`s business is about providing people with relevant information pieced together from different sources, regardless of whether they`re using a PC, a cell phone, or an interactive TV. InfoSpace`s server software allows it to tailor the experience to the device; its database technology allows the company to integrate multiple pieces of software or streams of data so they act as a single application. For instance, in a recent demonstration of what its software is capable of, InfoSpace showed how if you receive an e-mail on your phone asking you to meet a client in Los Angeles, you can check your calendar, book a flight, and pay for the ticket with your credit card with a few clicks on your cell-phone keypad. InfoSpace`s technology, which knows who and where you are, works in the background, coordinating all the relevant databases and Web servers to give you the information you need. Wireless carriers that don`t want to bother with all this software infrastructure can simply outsource it to Jain, and pay him $1 to $2 per subscriber per month for the privilege.

By Merrill Lynch`s best guess, 1 billion people worldwide will access the Web from a cell phone by 2005. If InfoSpace does in fact become the operating system for the wireless Web, Jain`s current swagger, in retrospect, will look timid. He`s not quite there yet, however. The bulk of his business is still on the plain old wired Web, providing content and services such as phone directories, search engines, comparison-shopping software, instant messaging, maps, calendars, and address books to 3,200 websites. The other part of his business is pairing this content with ads from 2 million local businesses nationwide, thanks to partnerships with regional phone companies, merchant banks, and local newspapers. InfoSpace`s stock has been hit, in part, because of concerns over the slowdown in Internet advertising, which made up an estimated quarter of the company`s $58 million in revenue for the third quarter. The $48 million loss (albeit mostly acquisition-related) doesn`t help matters either.

But the future of InfoSpace, Jain says, lies in extending all of these services to cell phones and other wireless devices (as well as broadband devices, which is why he just acquired Go2Net for $1.5 billion). Consummate dealmakers, Jain and Sarin have already struck partnerships with more than 20 wireless carriers around the globe -- including AT&T Wireless, SBC, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone, among others -- which collectively serve some 70 million subscribers. Most of those agreements are just starter deals to provide, say, calendars and address books that are legible on small screens. But Jain hopes the carriers will eventually outsource to InfoSpace the entire universe of Internet options that subscribers can access from their cell phones. Right now, for example, he`s hell-bent on turning your cell phone into a wallet, so you can split a restaurant bill with a friend, say, and pay your half by sending money from your cell phone to hers. (Jain, of course, wants to take a percentage of each transaction.) He also wants to link your wallet to those 2 million local businesses for whom he already displays banner ads, so they can send electronic coupons to your phone and then track whether you actually make a purchase. "If 90 percent of the money is being spent at physical locations outside the PC," he figures, "then you need to insert yourself where the money is being spent -- off-line." And, no surprise, he doesn`t want to stop there. "A cell phone should act like a credit card, a PDA [personal digital assistant], a pager, a remote control." The list goes on.

All that is down the road. But if InfoSpace has a long way to go, Jain isn`t striking any submissive postures. (At Sarin`s request, however, he has refrained lately from predicting that trillion-dollar market cap.) Instead, Jain patrols the hallways of InfoSpace HQ -- dotted with soothing yellow conference rooms, red and blue offices, and comfy worker-recuperation pods -- in his standard jeans, sweatshirt, and tube socks, checking in with lieutenants on the status of deals, spewing ideas, and plotting incessantly. He leaves the daily tending of the business to Sarin, who is as precise and smooth as Jain is manic. Because the bulk of InfoSpace`s revenues are expected to come -- eventually -- from wireless, Sarin, a highly respected executive who helped build Airtouch Cellular, and later Vodafone, was a logical choice to come in to steer the ship. And while Jain has clashed before with professional management brought in to impose order on InfoSpace, he and Sarin seem to have settled easily into complementary roles: Jain dreams up ideas for new products and acquisitions, and Sarin chooses the best of them -- and tries to contain the chaos emanating from his chairman.

Naveen drinks a lot of coffee," remarks Kevin Marcus, InfoSpace`s chief software architect. "If you didn`t know any better, you`d think he does amphetamines. He projects this random-energy feeling, which really is focused. But you can`t tell sometimes."

Jain`s restlessness has a long history. When he was growing up in India, his father was a civil engineer working for the government. The family moved to a new city every two years. "We never had a place to call home," Jain recalls, "so I learned to deal with change." After receiving an engineering degree and a master`s in business by the time he was 22, he moved to the States. Eventually, Jain wound up at Microsoft, where he managed MSN (originally conceived as a dial-up service like CompuServe or Prodigy). Brad Silverberg, the former Microsoft executive who oversaw Jain`s group and now invests in wireless startups through his holding company, Ignition, remembers him as "kind of like he is now: exuberant, full of ideas, talked really fast."

Jain may have been full of ideas at Microsoft, but corporate culture was not for him. So he quit in 1996 to start InfoSpace. "Running his own company is the right thing for Naveen," says Silverberg. Another colleague fromthose days is blunter: "His success was unexpected. There was so much respect at Microsoft for deep strategists, and Naveen could not be more different. It makes us reevaluate him and what he`s done."

If Jain`s success is now greeted with wonderment by some of his erstwhile Microsoft cronies, Jain himself seems to have no trouble explaining it. In all earnestness he declares, "I know I can get any deal done because I can always outsmart the person across the table." Jain never prepares a script for meetings or speeches, so he can more easily adapt to the situation at hand. That kind of self-reliance serves him well, for the most part, but as Jain says, "people don`t know how to distinguish between confidence and arrogance." According to him, if somebody finds him arrogant, they must suffer from low self-esteem; if they think him merely confident, their self-esteem is intact. Thus, jujitsu-like, Jain`s arrogance becomes someone else`s character defect.

Those who know Jain describe him not only as arrogant but also as "outlandish," "a maniac," and "Naveen-centric." And those are the people who like him. "I have been accused of everything in my life," he concedes, "except I have never been called stupid." He has, let it be said, called other people just that. In fact, it seems to be a favorite negotiating tactic. Jain tells the story of a meeting he once had with the CEO of a large publishing house in Manhattan that was looking for a way to distribute its content on the Web. This CEO -- short and stern -- suggested to Jain that websites should be designed a certain way. Instead of nodding politely, Jain blurted out, "That is so stupid!" Then he spent the next 15 minutes explaining to the stony-faced CEO exactly why his suggestion would never work. Afterward, as Jain walked out, he asked one of the CEO`s underlings how he thought the meeting had gone. "How did it go? You just called my boss stupid," sputtered the exasperated junior achiever. The next day Jain got a call. The publisher was ready to sign. "I have a great gift for telling people they are stupid," Jain explains, "and they don`t really think I mean it."

Jain sometimes likens being an entrepreneur to being "a cult leader," and he does somehow manage to convert even the most unlikely of followers. Back in 1996, software architect Kevin Marcus was still an undergraduate and had created a popular free e-mail directory for the Web. When Jain decided to get into that business, Marcus called him up, incensed that anyone would try to commercialize the Web. Jain was about to go to San Francisco on business, and talked Marcus into meeting him at the Hilton. As Jain tells it, he arrived to find a kid sitting at the bar with steam coming out of his ears. "I am going to kill you!" Marcus told Jain, to which Jain calmly responded, "Kevin, why don`t we have a beer? You can kill me later." By 2:30 a.m., Jain had won him over. The next day, Marcus was on his way to Seattle.

InfoSpace`s individual technologies are not necessarily the best, but the fact that they all work together -- theoretically, at least -- gives the company a competitive edge. To the extent that Jain can acquire or partner with companies that possess key technologies, he is staying one step ahead of his competitors. Since InfoSpace went public two years ago, Jain has masterminded nine acquisitions, including Saraide (whose wireless services gave InfoSpace instant credibility in Europe, where wireless is more established), IQOrder (which allows you to punch a bar-code number into your cell phone and comparison-shop right in a store), and most recently Go2Net (whose expertise in broadband and online gaming further extends InfoSpace`s reach).

The big question now is this: Can Jain integrate all these businesses, keep focused on the Web and wireless, and expand into broadband? And make a profit? Most analysts on Wall Street think he can. He surprised them this quarter by reporting a pro forma profit of $9.5 million, which doesn`t include acquisition-related and other supposedly one-time charges. The consensus is that InfoSpace should be able to stay in the black, at least on a pro forma basis, for the foreseeable future. Of the 18 analysts who cover the stock, all have either a buy or a strong-buy rating -- and bear in mind that this is a time when analysts are not shy about downgrading Internet stocks. To his credit, Jain has assembled a very impressive management team, including Sarin, Go2Net`s former CEO Russ Horowitz, who is now InfoSpace`s president, and head of engineering Russ Arun, who used to be Jain`s boss atMicrosoft. And a good thing too. The time has come to shift from sowing thousands of seeds helter-skelter to harvesting the deals that have already been planted -- a task requiring considerable patience.

In a way, Jain`s greatest strength -- dealmaking prowess -- may also be his Achilles` heel. At InfoSpace there is no such thing as a bad deal. The mentality until recently has largely been to get `em done and move on. So far, this has worked well: The 20 carriers InfoSpace does business with give it a seemingly unassailable position. But now those relationships need to be nurtured and milked for all they`re worth. That sort of detail-oriented work is not Jain`s strong suit. He has a reputation for doing deals on a handshake, then leaving others to clean up after him, and at least once this technique has come back to haunt him. Last year, InfoSpace settled two lawsuits totaling $15 million with former employees who said they were promised options they never got. InfoSpace had to acknowledge in its 1999 annual report that "primarily during our early stage of development, our procedures with respect to the manner of granting options to new employees were not clearly documented." Oops.

If anything truly rankles about Jain`s style of ceaseless promotion, it`s his own haste to off-load the company`s stock. Over the past two years, he has reduced his stake from 48 percent ownership to 22 percent, which netted him about $400 million. Last May, in an interview for another story, Jain told me, "Forget the story, go out and buy the stock!" That outburst seemed a little cheeky coming from a guy who had dumped $110 million worth of the stuff in January and had filed 10 days earlier to sell another $100 million worth. When I bring this up at Moghul Palace, Jain retorts across a plate of nan, "Ninety-five percent of my portfolio is in one holding." He adds that he and his wife recently exercised options to buy 2 million shares. "It was simple diversification," he continues. "You can`t criticize me until you put 95 percent of your net worth into InfoSpace." That`s a non-response, of course. Setting aside the fact that his stake in InfoSpace (now about $1 billion, down from $8 billion in March) is at most 70 percent of his net worth, I`m not out there hyping the stock. It`s so late in the evening, though, I can`t muster a retort. But that`s probably a self esteem .

[SigiSchwarz]

zu Infospace übernimmt "Locus Dialogue":

Übersetzt könnte "Locus Dialogue" auch heißen: "Scheißhaus-Parole"

[Tazio]

Mensch Sigi bist du gewöhnlich

[HUANTO]

Sigi ! Deine freie Übersetzung hat mir gefallen. Ich hoffe, das hat keine neg. Auswirkungen auf den Kurs !!!

[leyk]

Ab jetzt brauchen wir keinen Translator mehr!

Wir haben Siggi!

Der kauft nur Aktien,wo die Namensübersetzung auch stimmt!

Er hält auch nur Akamai-Aktien.

Das heißt auf Hawai : " Be cool !"

Spaß beiseite: 21,5 Dollar mehr ist heute wohl nicht drin.

grüße leyk

[Realnetworker]

21.68 is eigentlich noch ganz gut. zwar keine outperformance , aber die hatten wir ja gestern , und ich rechne einfach mal damit , das das heute kein Strohfeuer war, sondern der beginn einer stetigen aufwärtsbewegung an der nasdaq..heute waren inktomi broadv. und Co die Internetzugpferde, Morgen wird es aufgrund des Charts vielleicht infospace werden ..schaun ma mal...@leky..hab mal so ein bißchen im Börse-go -board rumgestöbert....dieser Fuchs Ede, ist das ein "Gott", oder der DT. computer"inda"-bruder von Jain...scheint ein weiser mann zu sein...
In diesem sinne....auf die Trillion $$$$$ Company...

[zuendi]

Cingular Wireless Launches Integrated Mobile Commerce Services, Powered by InfoSpace`s Wireless Technology Platform

ATLANTA, Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Cingular Wireless today announced the launch of mobile commerce services, powered by InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP), making integrated wireless shopping, rewards and transaction services seamless and secure for Cingular customers. Cingular has launched these services in its Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell wireless markets in California and Nevada, in its Cellular One property in Chicago and in its Southwestern Bell wireless property in Dallas. The company expects to have these services available in all markets by early next year.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000420/INFOLOGO )

The availability of these services marks Cingular`s aggressive entry into the mobile commerce arena in time for the holiday shopping season. Three new mobile commerce services, all powered by InfoSpace, a leading global provider of cross-platform merchant and consumer infrastructure services on wireless, broadband, and narrowband platforms, are now available: Secure Wireless Wallet, Rewards and Shopping. Cingular Wireless customers can access these services through the "My Wireless Window" service, which costs less than $7.00 per month, at www.mywirelesswindow.com.

"With InfoSpace`s integrated mobile commerce platform, we are now able to offer our customers an easy way to shop using their mobile phones," said Stephen Carter, president and CEO of Cingular Wireless. "Cingular customers can enjoy being among the first able to shop wirelessly for specific products and services, redeem valuable rewards from local and national merchants, and place orders for products instantly and securely, all on their mobile phones."

"As mobile communications becomes more prevalent and wireless penetration rates continue to skyrocket, we`re thrilled to offer our global carrier partners a unique, integrated technology platform that that will empower their vast customer bases of both merchants and consumers to leverage the promise of mobile commerce," said Arun Sarin, InfoSpace CEO. "Merchants stand to benefit from the ability to drive additional targeted traffic to both their brick-and-mortar and Web storefronts, while mobile consumers will have unprecedented capabilities to find localized, as well as national outlets to meet their specific needs."

Secure Wallet, Money-Saving Rewards and Integrated Shopping for Wireless Purchasing

Cingular Wireless now offers the following mobile commerce services, all powered by InfoSpace, in select markets, and will provide these to customers nationwide in early 2001:

My Wireless Window Wallet

Cingular Wireless customers begin the mobile commerce experience by registering for a secure Wireless Wallet online at the `My Wireless Window` Web page to store shipping and purchasing information, including methods of payment, allowing the consumer to take advantage of the Shopping and Rewards services. Next, after the shopper searches for products and selects the items to purchase through the Shopping engine, the Wireless Wallet delivers the shopper`s shipping and purchasing information for the designated products to the merchant`s Web site. The information is delivered through a secure online process, and the merchant processes the transaction.

My Wireless Window Rewards

Cingular Wireless customers can take advantage of tremendous savings by purchasing products and services from merchants participating in My Wireless Window Rewards, an innovative electronic/paperless promotions program using the existing credit card infrastructure system. To benefit from these special rewards, consumers search for deals from participating online or offline merchants by metropolitan area or product category, or register for customized alerts online, which will notify them when new merchant deals are available. Using this opt-in alert system, shoppers can take complete control of offers they would like to receive by entering a profile and specifying their favorite product or service categories, most frequented geographic locations, and the number, day and timing of notifications.

Consumers then purchase the goods or services at the participating merchant`s online or offline location using a payment method registered in their Wireless Wallet. Next, the rewards are matched and automatically credited to the consumer credit card statement or other designated accounts, through secure transaction processing, without the use of special codes or paper coupons. It is a seamless process for both the consumer and the merchant, offering money-saving rewards and a convenient commerce experience for mobile shoppers.

My Wireless Window Shopping

My Wireless Window Shopping empowers consumers with the information they need to make informed purchasing decisions. Cingular Wireless customers can search for a product by UPC/ISBN, name, manufacturer, category or keyword and quickly receive information such as MSRP, product descriptions and online merchant pricing from an expansive database containing millions of products. Nine searchable categories of products are available at launch, including: Books, music, video, consumer electronics, computers and software, sporting goods, health and beauty, toys and games and office supplies. When the shopper selects a product, they can choose to purchase directly from the merchant using their wireless handset and the information entered in their Wireless Wallet, or buy it from a nearby brick-and-mortar store. Orders can be placed instantly via the wireless handset, and shoppers receive the products they purchased to the shipping destination designated through the Wireless Wallet registration process.

Participating merchants selling their products through the InfoSpace Shopping engine don`t need a special Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Web site to be part of the mobile commerce experience.

About Cingular Wireless

Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between SBC (NYSE: SBC) and BellSouth (NYSE: BLS), provides wireless voice and data service to more than 19 million customers in 38 states, the District of Columbia and two U.S. territories. SBC and BellSouth share control of Cingular Wireless. Cingular operates in 42 of the top 50 markets in the United States. For more about Cingular Wireless visit our website at www.cingular.com/.

[gehtsjetztendlich]

Jetzt reicht`s!
Hab mir 10000 OS zu 0,05€ gekauft.
Und verscherbel sie bis Freitag mit min. 50% +

Wetten werden angenommen!

Shit happens

mfg
gehtsjetztendlich

[1000kV]

Was f. einen OS hast Du ?
WKN?
Gruß
1000kv

[Leeloo]

Hi gehtsjetztendlich,

habe das gleiche getan und denke Du hast auch den 573398. Wo siehst Du denn Infospace am Ende des Jahres. Ins Geld wird der SChein aber wohl nicht mehr laufen (von dahrer rechtzeitig raus damit), da Infospace dann schon einen irren Kursverlauf bis Ende Februar hinlegen müßte.
Aber "who knows". Viel Glück.

[gehtsjetztendlich]

@leeloo:
yep, der 573398 ist es!

Ich denke (hoffe) daß INSP im Zuge einer technischen
Gegenreaktion bis 18-20$ laufen könnte.
Das würde mir schon ausreichen um mich wieder zu
trennen.

hab mir den Schein schonmal am 23.8.00 zu 0,42€ gekauft
und am 5.9.00 zu 0,95€ verkauft. - deshalb war natürlich
0,05€ sehr interessant.
Es müssen aber die Citygangster auch wieder mitspielen
und die VOLA hochsetzen

Allen investierten viel Glück

mfg
gehtsjetztendlich

[Pitcairn]

Infospace ist im November deutlich weniger als noch im Oktober geshortet worden:

11/00 12,651,852 8,624,980 1.47
10/00 16,048,410 6,526,016 2.46
09/00 14,084,657 7,990,843 1.76
08/00 9,496,437 5,180,412 1.83
07/00 6,315,383 5,071,907 1.25
06/00 3,871,584 4,948,867 0.78

Ist ein erfreuliches Zeichen und deutet darauf hin, dass nun endlich langsam der Boden erreicht zu sein scheint. 12 Dollar haben sich bisher als untere Unterstützungslinie auch ganz gut gehalten. Nachbörslich ist Insp aufgrund der Gewinnwarnung von Gateway allerdings schon wieder 5 Prozent im Minus (aktuell: 11,75 Dollar).

[Leeloo]

Oha. Heute kriegen wir wieder kräftig ein auf die Mütze.
An "gehtsjetztendlich": unseren Call können wir wohl erst einmal vergessen. Meinst Du Infospace hat noch eine Chance bis Ende Februar kräftig zu steigen. Bin da leider eher skeptisch und überlege bei einem der nächsten kleinen Sprünge nach oben, die Dinger rauszuhauen. Alles ganz schön frustrierend. Der Call war eine meiner letzten Hoffnungen, da ich für Infospace nach den Zahlen eine glänzende Zukunft (vor allem kursentechnisch) erhoffte.

[gehtsjetztendlich]

@leeloo
Laß mal unser Baby laufen
aktuell + 10%

SL erscheint mir bei dem OS nicht ratsam - gestern bei
0,02€ - heute wieder bei 0,04€

laß uns einfach damit zocken.

Mit dem CMGI OS 751223 läßt sich wunderbar Kohle verdienen
Gestern bei 0,20 und 0,22€ gekauft, heute bei 0,31€ raus.
Habe mit dem OS schon 6mal getradet - nur 1mal falsch
gelegen - gute Ausbeute.

mfg
gehtsjetztendlich

[wurbala]

Hallo INSP-Fangemeinde,

eigentlich habe ich mir ja mal geschworen, nie mehr
in ein fallendes Messer zu greifen, ich konnte aber
nicht widerstehen und hab meine Position von INSP
noch einmal verbilligt.

Hier noch eine Einschätzung des aktuellen
HOT STOCk INVESTORS:

Hot Stocks Investor
Infospace kaufen
Datum : 04.12.2000
Zeit :14:09

Nach Einschätzung der Wertpapierexperten von Hot
Stocks Investor kann Infospace (WKN 917694)
voraussichtlich im Verlauf dieses Quartals die
Marke einer Million zahlender Kunden erreichen.

Das Unternehmen habe schon im vergangenen Sommer
die Gewinnschwelle erreichen können. Würde das
Weihnachtsgeschäft nur einigermaßen erwartungsgemäß
verlaufen, könne die Prognose erfüllt werden. Die
ersten Einschätzungen, die man aufgrund des Verlaufs
der Shopping-Tage zu Thanksgiving erhalten habe,
seien positiv ausgefallen. Die Analysten von Hot
Stocks Investor würden den Titel daher zum Kauf
empfehlen. Auf Basis des aktuellen Kurses um 12 USD
sollten die Aktien ein Potential von bis zu 200% haben.

[gehtsjetztendlich]

@leeloo
Freu mich schon auf die Kursstellung der EUWAX morgen
früh!!!
Die 10000 OS scheinen sich doch noch zu lohnen.

Mein CMGI-OS zu 0,21€ wird wohl auch noch zur Goldgrube

loooooooooooong INSP / loooooooooooooong CMGI

[zuendi]

testet mal www.games.com an.
sehr nette page, die INSP auch noch $$ bringt

<<Games.com will include three primary revenue sources, generating income via advertising, a Games.com store, and premium subscription services on the site. Hasbro and Go2Net will each share in the revenue generated from the sale of advertising and sponsorship. Go2Net will also receive fees for Games.com e-commerce transactions originating from Go2Net.

Go2Net will receive from Hasbro a $7.5 million fee for the license and access to Hasbro`s most popular games for a licensed, co-branded Games.com offering on PlaySite. Separately, Hasbro and Go2Net will enter into a three-year development and service agreement to collaborate in the development and operation of Games.com. During 2000, Hasbro expects to spend approximately $60 million to develop and launch Games.com>>.

[gehtsjetztendlich]

@leeloo:
ich hoffe du hast deine OS behalten! Notieren zur Zeit
bei 0,08€ = 60% Plus!!

Meine CMGI OS liegen zZ. bei 0,38€ = 81% Plus!

Lass uns einfach weiterzocken ==> auf Island liegen
bei INSP viele 5000-er Blöcke auf der buy-seite.
Wird wohl nicht lange dauern und ein (B)Analyst wird
INSP hochstufen (nachdem er sich vorher eingedeckt hat!!)

und immer schön llllllllllocker bleiben

[zuendi]

Far reaches of space
Cyber Elite 12/06/00 4:30 PM
By Stanwood Chang


In this day and age where broad "horizontal" Internet strategies are no longer rewarded, but rather focused "vertical" business models -- Yahoo! (YHOO) notwithstanding -- it`s both surprising and refreshing to find a company that still has a multi-pronged attack on all things Web.

That would be Bellevue, Wash.-based InfoSpace (INSP), which is sometimes referred to as a "content aggregator," but whose business model takes it well beyond content.

One of the first

Founded in 1996 by chairman and chief strategist Naveen Jain, InfoSpace.com, as it was then known, started by providing such simple services as "yellow pages" directories, e-mail, search, and address books and calendars. But as the Web gained more power and spread beyond the desktop, InfoSpace.com went right along with the flow, adopting its services and inventing new technologies to address the burgeoning wireless and broadband movements.

As it shifted into being more of an infrastructure player, InfoSpace.com made the decision in March of this year to drop the ".com" attachment from its name, a move that turned out to be prescient from an image standpoint after the stock market tanked in April, punishing many pure-play Internet companies.

And it was in April that 46-year-old Arun Sarin left his post as chief executive of Vodafone`s (VOD) US and Asia Pacific regions to join InfoSpace as CEO.

Stepping it up

Three months after coming on board, Sarin engineered the acquisition of Web site operator Go2Net, which brought into his stable, among other things, Silicon Investor, a competitor of this Web site.

Sarin also kept InfoSpace on the cutting edge by snapping up speech recognition technology firm Locus Dialogue last month in a deal worth up to $132 million, with an eye on incorporating Locus` voice portal and engine into InfoSpace`s wireless services in particular.

Raging Bull recently spoke with Sarin to survey the wide landscape in which his company plays.




Cyber: Describe for us what your company does.

Sarin: What InfoSpace does is provide technology for the Internet, whether it`s the wired, wireless, or broadband Internet, or merchants coming online using the Internet. So we have a suite of products and applications that people buy from us and then install in their own Web sites. So think of us as an Internet infrastructure company.

Cyber: What are your different revenue streams?

Sarin: In every space, the revenue model is a little bit different. In the wireless space we have roughly 88% market share here in the United States, and we`ve got customers like Verizon (VZ), AT&T Wireless (AWE), VoiceStream (VSTR), Alltel (AT), and Cingular, which is a joint venture between SBC (SBC) and BellSouth (BLS). The revenue model there is basically $1 to $2 per subscriber per month, so as the ramp-up in this whole space occurs, our revenue model increases with that.

On the wired side, we provide all kinds of products and services to the America Onlines (AOL), MSNs, and Lycoses of the world, and they pay us for our products and services as they use them.

On the broadband side, it`s very similar to the wireless side, to the extent broadband customers use our portal services, our infrastructure services, and they pay us for it.

And finally on the merchant side, we provide basic things like building online shopping experiences all the way to back-end gateway processing, where we process all the monies for merchants, and there we typically get [paid] 1% for the transactions that we complete.

Cyber: Now, you formed an alliance with Nortel (NT) recently. How does a deal with a telecom equipment provider work?

Sarin: Nortel supplies telecommunications services to carriers around the world, and supplies gateways that bring the Internet to their customers.

What we do is sit on top of Nortel`s gateways and provide all kinds of products and services, but principally in the wireless area. So it`s coming packaged with all these applications that you can take to market instantaneously and have a wireless portal, commerce, voice recognition, or any number of products.

Cyber: So if I`m a wireless carrier, for example, what exactly are you providing for me?

Sarin: We do everything from basic content integration, [including] one-click shopping and one-click search kind of services. We do unified messaging and e-mail and voice recognition. We do m-commerce (mobile commerce), we do promotions with merchants.

So there is a whole stack of services we provide, and some customers buy the whole stack, while others may buy half the stack depending on the situation they find themselves in.

Cyber: Do you think there`s any danger that someday the Baby Bells and other wireless carriers will decide to develop their own technology in-house instead of outsourcing to you?

Sarin: Well, you know, this is the Internet business that changes possibly every week, but certainly every other month, and the pace of innovation here is tremendous. And the reason people come to us is because they don`t feel that this is an area they have a lot of expertise in. Now, will they try and develop this expertise? Yes.

On the other hand, the world is going to keep moving on, so hopefully the products and services we provide a year from now will be quite different from what we provide today, and we`ll keep staying on the edge. Our customers are very happy because they get very quick time to market, they get absolutely state-of-the-art stuff, and it helps them compete with the big names out there so they can be successful.

Cyber: Are you frustrated at all by the pace of wireless development in the U.S. and the lack of a clear standard compared to other regions of the world?

Sarin: You know, while the overall adoption of wireless is a little bit slower than Western Europe or Asia, principally Japan and Korea, the development of wireless Internet is actually coming on very nicely.

If you go to Europe, you don`t see some of the wireless Internet products that we have here in the United States because they`re so happy with SMS, which stands for short message service, where you basically send messages back and forth to each other.

So they`re actually wondering how hard to press on things like voice recognition and unified messaging, and so forth. They`re quite happy making money the SMS way.

I think what they`ll find in the next year or so is that they`re falling behind a little bit because SMS is not Internet. It doesn`t have all the beauty the Internet has in terms of being able to get any information to the user. So they are, I think, lulling themselves a little bit with the success that they`re having on the SMS side.

Cyber: You were one of the first companies, if not maybe the first publicly traded one, to drop ".com" from your name...

Sarin: Yeah, we did that even before it went out of style. We`re not a dot-com. We`re not a destination. We weren`t encouraging people to come to our Web page and transact any business.

Our thing is helping our customers be successful, so it`s our customers` ".com" that should be interesting to the end customer, not our ".com." You know, we`re an infrastructure provider, so for us to have ".com" didn`t make a lot of sense.

Cyber: You just recently acquired Locus Dialogue. What do they bring to the table, and what is your interest in speech recognition?

Sarin: Locus is a tremendous acquisition for us. We`re big believers that while we`re all happy to see data when we want to see data, there are many, many times when we actually want to hear the data, or want to speak to get the data, because it`s not convenient. So for us, having a voice portal was tremendously important.

Now, as you know, Locus is both a voice portal and a voice engine, so it has both those components. And the reason voice recognition hasn`t taken off, in our view, is because we don`t have people who are fine-tuning the engines and the applications and the services all in one lineup, as it were. And when we line all of those up, we`ll be able to provide outstanding service to our carrier partners.

Cyber: But speech recognition has been so slow to develop. You know, Internet video conferencing was supposed to be the next big thing, and the markets sort of abandoned that. Is there any chance of speech recognition going down that road of obsolescence?

Sarin: Obviously anything can happen, but our view is that voice recognition is ready for a takeoff if the applications are right. If you have a menu situation that is cumbersome, believe me, people won`t use it.

But that`s the whole reason not only to have a voice portal built into Locus, but also the voice engine so we can actually play with the engine, play with the portal, play with everything, and then serve it up to our customers. And it`s that ability to go back and forth, in and out, that I think will make us successful.

Cyber: What attracted you to Go2Net? What holes did they fill in your product line or business model?

Sarin: They filled in many, many things. First off, from a product and service perspective, they filled in search technology, message board technology, games technology, and merchant technology.

But probably the most exciting thing, from my point of view, was just the depth of the management. We operate in some very large markets, and to make these markets come alive you need a very deep management team. So the management talent was a tremendously attractive thing to pursue.

Cyber: What kind of things can you dream about offering now with Go2Net`s help that you couldn`t offer before? I understand you`re exploring gaming and interactive TV.

Sarin: Yeah, all of those things. And like I said, if we can just pursue the four big markets we`re in now with energy and vigor in the next 12 months, I think that`ll be a fantastic win for us. And if we feel at any stage we want to enter the enterprise market, we will absolutely look to enter it.

Cyber: Even after being knocked down 90% from its all-time high, your stock still has roughly a $4.4 billion market cap despite a net loss of 79 cents per share over the trailing four quarters. Do you feel your stock deserves its valuation?

Sarin: Oh, yes. Like I said, we`ve got 88% market share in the wireless business. We have a 90% reach in the wire line business. We have 1.9 million merchants who we do business with. We have some of the top layers in the broadband business. So if you look at the technology and the franchise that we have, that`s what people are valuing.

Cyber: When do you expect to become profitable on a net basis?

Sarin: We actually have not announced that, so that`s not something we`ve talked about publicly.

Cyber: Who do you view as your competitors?

Sarin: Because we participate in so many lines of business, and because of our deep stack of products and services, there`s really no one company that competes with us in all of these spaces.

Our biggest competitors are the IT (information technology) departments of the companies that we deal with who say, "Hey, this is really pretty cool technology, I`d like to try and do this myself." But outside of that, we don`t have any head-on competition in each of the four spaces with the deep stack that we have.

Cyber: What`s next for InfoSpace? What does the future hold?

Sarin: Well, we`re still very early in our life cycle in terms of bringing these products and services to market. We`re pushing very hard in Europe, we`re pushing very hard in Asia, and as I said, if we pursue these four areas well, we may consider getting into the enterprise market, and those would be new things for us.

Cyber: What`s the market been like for you in Asia? Is it still very nascent?

Sarin: Oh, yes, very early stage. But you know, in the wireless Internet business, it`s coming on very strong. Korea is very active on the Internet side, China is very active on the Internet side. We have a presence in Australia already, and we`ve got a very high-profile customer there in Vodafone. In Europe, we just announced a relationship with Virgin.

So we`ve got some very marquee names that are taking our products and services, and job one is making sure that we do a terrific job for our existing customers.




http://www.ragingbull.altavista.com/articles/cyberelite/12-0…

[zuendi]

M-Commerce: The War Has Begun!

By Kamalika Banerjee


Is m-commerce just another techno-fad? Or will our life styles depend on it in the near future? Depends on where in the world you live!


Picture this. You get off the plane in San Francisco, and turn on your cell phone. Based on your personal profile, you get:

1) All your e-mails from the corporate server and your Internet Service Provider.

2) Instant access to your savings and checking account balances, recent credit card purchases, the current value of your stock portfolio – and the ability to transfer funds, purchase stocks and pay bills.

3) The weather forecast for your three-day trip to the San Francisco Bay area.

4) A map of your hotel’s location in San Francisco, with all of your bank’s ATMs pinpointed.

5) A list of all the Indian restaurants within a five-mile radius of the hotel.

6) News headlines in your specific interest area.

7) A list of all book and computer stores in the area that are offering special sales


The list could go on and on.

Wishful thinking? Science fiction? Hardly. A lot of this information is already available over wireless networks. The rest could be available soon. A new business model is emerging with the integration of wireless networks, data communications and electronic commerce to create wireless e-commerce or mobile commerce.

And it may be Internet retailing’s last hope for survival.

A New Business Model

Naveen Jain of InfoSpace, Inc. (NASDAQ: INSP) points out that one of the reasons the e-commerce model has failed for many pure-play online retailers is that it ignores a fundamental truth: shopping is a social experience.

“People sometimes want to go to a store, speak with a store assistant and actually see and feel a thing before they buy it,” he says. “E-commerce failed for the same reason that catalogues failed.”

Jain defines m-commerce as “any commerce conducted over mobile devices, where the transaction need not be completed over the devices, but definitely facilitated by the use of them.”

For instance, one might do comparison-shopping using a cell phone and then go to the brick-and-mortar store to pick up the goods. In this case, Jain points out, the transaction takes place in the real world, but because the shopper used a mobile device to make the buying decision, it falls in the category of m-commerce.

“M-commerce is more realistic,” he claims. “It is not trying to change fundamental human behavior by eliminating the real world, which is what e-commerce tried to do.” By providing different location-based and time-based services, it is simply making the process of shopping easier for them.

In other words, m-commerce aims to bring the brick-and-mortar retailers closer to shoppers who use the Internet as a channel of communication and source of information. The possibilities are endless for both the consumer and the retailer. For instance, you use your cell phone to shop for a fax machine. Sears has the one you want, so you end up buying it at one of their stores. Twenty-four hours later, you get an e-mail message, saying that thanks to your carrier, you are getting a $50 discount on your purchase. Is it magic? Well not exactly. Sears paid your carrier and your service provider to make that information available to you. They in turn give you a small share of it. Why was Sears so generous? In the hope that you’ll shop there more often than you did in the past. In this way everyone gets a piece of the action — the brick-and-mortar retailer, the carrier, the service provider, and you, the shopper. Everyone involved in the transaction becomes part of what Jain calls the m-commerce “food chain.”

But that’s still not the end of the deal. You can now directly transfer the amount to your checking or savings account or your phone account using your cell phone!

Reality Check

Sounds wonderful! So when do we get started?

According to Jain, by the end of next year. But Nick Desai, founder and CEO of privately held Zkey.com, a mobile commerce applications and services developer and integrator, is more skeptical.

“Mobile Internet is still a novelty, not a necessity, in the US,” he points out. There are a lot of reasons for that. To begin with, the US already has a good wired infrastructure, which makes the need for wireless less urgent. Countries in Europe and Asia, which by and large lack a sophisticated wire infrastructure, are adopting wireless technologies faster. Dev Khare, founder and CEO, Covigo, another wireless application and services developer, agrees. In a country like India, for instance, where a caller often has to wait weeks to get a phone line, mobile operators are leapfrogging the phone companies. Also, personal computers are still the Internet-access device of choice in the US. It will be a while before Americans use mobile devices in great numbers to access the Internet. People in the US, on the other hand, still think of cell phones mainly as communication devices.

Secondly, Desai points out that Europe and Asia have just done certain things right from the beginning. They have a unified GSM network, for example. And they have the calling party pay rather than the receiving party. As a result, there are more than 300 million cell phones in Europe, compared to only 100 million in the US. Imode, for instance, went from virtually zero in February 1999 to half a million users today. Both Desai and Khare note that there is nothing like that happening in the US today.

Last but not least, going wireless is “not simply a question of putting a Web site on the mobile device.” Khare points out that mobile users have completely different usage patterns.

“These are not pro-active users, they are not going to surf the Net for information and deals as they do on their PCs,” he says. The applications accordingly have to be optimized for the mobile platform. “You have to enable intelligent interactivity between ‘identities’,” says Desai. An ‘identity’ is a vast array of information stored in a myriad of sources, only portions of which need to be accessed for any particular transaction. For instance, to order a pizza you need very different information than to buy an airline ticket. “What you need to do is to collect the information and release it selectively and securely to the relevant merchant.” Consequently privacy and security are crucial issues that need to be addressed before any others, according to Desai. Personalization, localization and timeliness of information are also vital to the success of mobile commerce.

Slow But Steady

Given all the issues that need to be addressed, is the mobile Internet ever going to be a reality in the US then? The answer is yes, everyone agrees.

Mohan Vishwanath, vice president of Yahoo! Everywhere, Yahoo’s wireless division, says that the cost of upgrading mobile devices to enable them to access data along with voice (“since the most popular mobile device is still the cell phone”) is low.

“You have to optimize your applications and services for the low bandwidth available now, and gain momentum,” he says. Besides, as InfoSpace’s Jain points out, the cell phone is the only true personal computing device. “It is already the indispensable communication device,” he says. “To make it the indispensable buying tool and your ‘life-organizer’ in general, you have to convince people that it can become exactly that.”

It is possible to do that, once you build the right applications for the mobile platform, says Desai. “But let us not forget that it took two decades for the cell phone to become what it is today, indispensable both to corporate executives and to soccer moms. I would say that it will take another two years at least before people even think that they need this kind of service.” After all, not everyone is rushing to the Internet to shop — even today. It is only realistic to assume that the mobile platform will click in certain instances, but won’t in others, he concludes.

Vishwanath, however, is skeptical that people will develop enough of a ‘personal relationship’ with their cell phones to transform them into the standard personal computing device of the future.

“There is a kind of standardization in the desktop environment,” he notes. “But nobody knows what applications and services will click on the mobile platform. Every user has unique preferences.”

Khare is even more doubtful. “M-commerce is a very B2C focused term, having the obvious connotation of selling something to someone,” he observes. “We have seen e-commerce failing. I don’t think m-commerce is going to catch on. For this reason, we at Covigo, are trying to target the enterprises that will want to do buy-side and sell-side commerce applications, ERP [enterprise resource planning], e-mail and other non-Web-based applications.”

Whatever the individual perception, mobile commerce is undoubtedly hot. Analysts tell us that close to 50 percent of all e-commerce will be conducted on mobile devices soon. While it is true that market predictions are often made by people wearing rose-colored glasses, cell phones have so far proven to be an exception. The number of cellular subscribers has consistently exceeded analyst estimates.

Should the figures for m-commerce be any different? Let me take a quick look at my cell phone. Now which was the button for market forecasts…?





http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine/displaydetail.asp?artic…

[Realnetworker]

Interessante Artikel!@zuendi...
Wie Jain schon sagte:"Wer Infospaceaktien besitzt ist kein Aktionär, sondern ein Gläubiger"
Egal , das wird jetzt durchgezogen...
PS:Henry Blodget sagte gestern nach der Abstufung "Yahoos", daß die , die diesen Krieg überleben gestärkt zurückkommen werden , und gute performance abliefern werden...bes. glaubt er an die wiederauferstehung des Wireless-marktes(daher wohl auch die gestrige outperformance)
Gruß RNW

[Arban]

Mich würde der eingestellte Artikel von Zündi auch brennend interessieren. Gibts den auch auf deutsch. Bin nicht so doll in English. Ansonsten: kleine Zusmmenfassung wäre auch OK.

Gruß

[TomNovy]

Es gibt immer drei Szenarien:

1.) Nasdaq steigt 5 Tage lang (gabs das schonmal?) --> Infospace startet durch

2.) Nasdaq sinkt 5 Tage lang --> Infospace stürzt regelrecht ab

3.) Nasdaq steigt und sinkt abwechselnd --> Infospace sackt langsam aber sicher ab


Lieber Gott lass diese Scheißjahr endlich vorübergehen bevor ich ganz pleite bin.

[Zipdrive7]

!

Dieser Beitrag wurde vom System automatisch gesperrt. Bei Fragen wenden Sie sich bitte an [e-mail]

[zuendi]

From Robertson Stephens...

INFOSPACE POWERS ALLTEL`S UNIFIED SITE
Alltel (AT $62-7/8) launched a new and simplified Internet
service Web site that now provides access to its dial-up,
high-speed DSL and wireless customers. (Previously, the company
had a separate site for each). Alltel`s new site, powered by
InfoSpace`s (INSP $12-5/16) cross-platform infrastructure
services, is now the first player in the communications industry
to boast a unified site for its services accessible via multiple
devices and platforms. We believe this initiative translates into
a key competitive advantage for both companies. Alltel has set a
precedent for its rivals while creating an attractive and
user-friendly site for its customer base. With yet another
example of InfoSpace`s cross-platform potential, aided by the
broadband benefits of the recent Go2net acquisition, we believe
InfoSpace has again demonstrated the ability to help its
affiliates provide unified solutions.

[TomNovy]

hab mich auch schon gewundert warum Infospace auf einmal wieder 7% verloren hat, bei weiter steigender Nasdaq

[Indexking]

Die Analysten von WR Hambrecht + Co stufen die Aktie Infospace. (WKN
917694) auf kaufen ein.
Gestern am 6. Dezember 2000 gab InfoSpace bekannt, dass man die
Geschäftsbeziehungen des Unternehmens mit ALLTEL auf den Breitbandbereich
ausgedehnt habe. InfoSpace werde seine private Portal Serviceplattform für
ALLTEL´s ISP, DSL und Wireless Internet Services öffnen. Die Vereinbarung
werde es ALLTEL`s ISP, DSL und Wireless Internet Nutzern den Zugang zu
www.alltel.net´s Kommunikationsportal via Desktop-PC oder Handset
ermöglichen.

Dies schließe unter anderem E-Mail, Adressbuch, Kalender und to do Listen
ein. Man meine, die Ankündigung sei deswegen bedeutsam, da es InfoSpace`s
erste Erweiterung in dem Bereich unter Einbezug von Breitbandtechnik sei.
Zur Zeit verdiene InfoSpace pro Kunde ca. 1 bis 2 Dollar. InfoSpace
erwartet, dass es eine ähnliche Einnahme durch die Öffnung der
personalisierten Serviceplattformen für das Breitband geben werde.

InfoSpace unterhalte noch Geschäftsbeziehungen zu vielen anderen
Unternehmen, die ein Breitband Programm haben(z. B. Cingular). Hier sehe
man noch großes Expansionspotential. Das 12 Monatskursziel betrage $ 33.






Agentur : Aktiencheck.de

Schliessen · Drucken

[TomNovy]

Warum ist Infospace nachbörslich eingebrochen ?
Irgendwelche News außer dass sie leider wieder zum Kauf empfohlen wurde ?

[TomNovy]

aah, Mr. Gore ist wieder mal schuld. Sind alle Aktien in den Keller gegangen

[Realnetworker]

Spielbank hat auch nichts gebracht(gut das ich meine EC_Karte daheim gelassen hab)..vielleicht sollte ich es mal mit Puts versuchen, wäre bis zum jetzigen zeitpunkt ja ein voller erfolg gewesen*g*
Gruß der langsam einschlafende real...

[Bandit137]

Könnte mir jemand verraten, wo man diese nachbörlichen Kurse bekommt ?

Wäre ein netter Zug.

Gruß Bandit137

[Indian Summer]

zb: http://htmlgritch.island.com/SERVICE/QUOTE?STOCK=insp

[TomNovy]

http://www.3dstockcharts.com (insp)

nach erstem Gebrauch kurz mit irgendwelchen daten registrieren lassen

[Bandit137]

Danke für die Antwort

Gruß Bandit137