As good a reply as it was, let me pose the following:

- same code base as empeg car
- more features
- more expensive

What's all this then? Why, it's the new HSX-109, of course. I want it to succeed, and it deserves to, as well - but if we use Doug's argument, then how can it?

It's being sold into a different market, and a much larger one at that. It is more expensive though, so the same effect as the car player - sticker shock - may still yet come into play. Time will tell.

My own opinion is that if the car player had not existed in the first place, then neither would the HSX. If the HSX does succeed, it will be riding on the shoulders of the deceased car player. The one really good effect it may have is that it may pave the way for a similar, car-type product in the future. This will however be a while off yet, though, so don't hold your breath: it won't be an SB, or Empeg badged product anyway.

Going back to the pitch of my original post - I am more annoyed about the lack of straightforward professional courtesy shown by SB to the Empeg lads than the loss of the car player (not wholly true, though ). The lack of "Moral Fibre" shown by SB when times started to get tough was appalling, and I still fail to see how they can justify (other than high production costs and relatively low sales due to an absence of any market presence) cutting the player after they had just spent a bundle re-engineering the damn thing ready for another production batch! You can't tell me that just the cost of re-tooling the panel tool caused them to loose their nerve!!!

No, I am more and more convinced, as others have been stating for a while here, that this was not anything to do with product acquisition or market positioning, it was purely to obtain the knowledge and manpower of the Empeg development team. If so, then how else can you view their following actions as anything other than Machiavellian in nature - which immediately implies there was a long-term strategy in mind at the time of the takeover.

A lot of the people involved in the takeover on SB's side (including Tim E, the tech liason who was the prime mover) have since been canned or have resigned. This implies a schism between factions in SB management between the penny-pinchers (the winners) and the engineers (the loosers, as usual). As soon as the red ink started to appear, weak management allowed the cost cutting faction to come to the fore, showing that short-termism was the primary focus of the management team all along.

To their credit (and I suspect mainly due to Empeg's influence) the car player concept has not simply been binned, since a badge-engineering approach has been taken to try and find an established partner in the marketplace. But this is a strategy that feeds out expertise to other companies, and is again short term in nature. It means that after the OEMs who license now have learned how to do it, generation 2 of OEM products wil essentially be in-house engineered by their own teams, they will be low-proce and mass-market, they will finally build the taste for the product in the market place some 5-8 years down the road, and then Where the hell will SB be? Down the tubes, baby, down the tubes.

SB is selling the talent of the Empeg team cheaply, and they should be ashamed. No doubt I am shooting in the dark in the absence of fact (hey, this is a non-corporate forum after all!) and I suspect statements herein will ruffle some feathers - unfortunately within Empeg itself. So allow me to issue the standard disclaimer in this case: All these statements made herein are my own opinion, based on many years of similar experience in software and engineering. The reason I make them is because I have high personal regard for all of the team at Cambridge (primarily due to their sense of integrity) and I do not wish them sold down the river by short-sighted management with no nerve or concept of forward planning. Forgive me, lads - my mouth runs away sometimes, as well you know.

The trouble with SB's (in my opinion, young, inexperienced and nerveless) management was that they wanted it all, and not tomorrow, NOW. Sorry chums, it just doesn't happen that way - the old adage about oak trees and acorns comes to mind here. In watching Hugo, Rob, Mike and Patrick's initially slow but steady attempts at growth I am inclined to believe that they would have suceeded on their own, but in the much longer term. It would have been many years, and they would have needed more products, but I am confident they would have suceeded. We'll never know.

Put it this way - if I was aware that Hugo was considering a further, independent commercial venture in the technolgy market, then I suspect I may well be knocking on his door with cash to invest