Ann: Appendix 4C, page-14

The initial reluctance appears to simply stem from it being a new product. Everything I've read and heard, including in this conference call is that surgeons are just taking a really cautious approach to this.

Basically they pick a patient, the most ideal patient to trial the product see how it goes. Then they might pick other patients with different characteristics to see how it goes.. and then once they see the consistently good results - they adopt. As you can see, this is creates long lead times.

Ironically I think the problem stems from its initial success for the launch of its product which achieved a 20% market share in six months. This probably led them to believe they could achieve similar success in the U.S.

However, as we now know, the U.S market and the behaviour of surgeons there is clearly different and much more risk averse (I am guessing because of the much more litigious nature of its people).

What I suspect is that the community of surgeons in Oz is much smaller - and so you only need to get success through a few influential surgeons to quickly build market share.

The U.S however is a huge market, but what it means is that it is also difficult to quickly build that kind of trust as there are many competing products and leaders out there.