"You do realise that you would have more credibility if you..."
actually addressed or provided a counter-argument rather than the usual Doz deflection. First you dismiss my points as historical and challenged me to provide current issues at NOR. I accepted your challenge and provided 4 current issues facing NOR. Your response: the obsession with my free-carried position.
Why don't you at least try some critical thinking? Here are some questions you may want to address or at least think about when considering NOR. I have provided some guidance and research to help you out.
1. Why haven't NOR reported any stats or released a Case Study/User Case re: Spark?
Remember when NOR released an Ann with some Apple stats when VM downloads was highly ranked? Then we had PO say in a Q&A the store stats aren't accurate. So which is true? Stats are only good when positive but inaccurate otherwise?
As per Spark's Investor Centre as at FY21:
2.4m mobile customers;
Down 4% on FY20
Down a whopping 13% for contracted customers
Google Play has Spark VM at under 50k downloads
Apple has 45% market share
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/new-zealandI am being very generous with a 5% Spark customer penetration number.
Remember when some on here said Spark VM would provide a competitive advantage? Well, customers are leaving in droves. Apart from the quote from the Spark bod in an Ann saying NOR was part of a team effort; VM has not been mentioned in the last 3 Spark Annual Reports. Why is that? MySpark App was mentioned in AR21 with 600k downloads (25% penetration) and 3.6m customer interactions per month. This supports my point that VM should have been integrated into Spark's App. But nope, PO thought he knew better and went with a revenue-share model and failed.
2. What happened to all of the pilots?
There was no mention of pilots in the last 2 Q's and only a reference in AR21 with regards to a general statement about VM revenue recognition. The last mention of "pilots" was March Q where the following carrot was dangled: "currently has live telco pilots in multiple geographies at various stages of progression and hopes to report in further detail on these pilots as they develop". This was in reference to a time period at least 7.5 months ago. As "live" pilots are no longer mentioned are we to draw the conclusion they have finished? And what were the outcomes?
3. What happened to Amelia?
On 23/11/20, NOR they were going to "reinvent telco voicemail" and jointly offer "super-premium telco call completion services" . Lots of excitement and bullish phrases in this Ann. But then in the last Q we get: " Norwood is still maintaining a relationship with IPSoft/Amelia but is currently allocating most of its Intelligent Assistant R&D attention to GPT-3." Why pivot away from Amelia? IPSoft was branded as a world leader in AI. Crucially though the Amelia spokesman said: "this partnership will drive measurable business benefits through cost and time savings for Norwood customers, present and future". NOR only has 1 telco customer and Spark has obviously decided this super-premium offering is not for them or else NOR would not have pivoted.
This is the thing the perma-bulls fail to understand about NOR's partnerships: it is about NOR selling the partner's products to NOR's prospective customers; not the other way around. Do you need proof?
i. See Amelia guy's quote
ii. The Metaswitch partnership is technical; that is, confirmation that NOR's tech is compatible. Metaswitch only sell other companies tech via the Rhino Market Place. NOR is not listed. In the VM video, Metaswitch clearly state they are offering a competing product to NOR and as parts of the video were recorded pre-MS take-over, MS Azure is mentioned as the partner. What benefit is there to Metaswitch to promote NOR's tech or acquire NOR? Consider Point 1 above for guidance.
iii. Oracle, a former partner through a paid subscription by NOR only sell other's tech via their market place.
iv. SalesForce, another name which has come and gone, only sells other's tech through their market place.
All IMO... accept the facts sourced from NOR announcements, Spark / Oracle / Metaswitch / SalesForce web sites.
PS Will I get 3 deflections in a row? Odds-on.
