”

But to sift the sand and find a mispriced bet for this segment of technology has shown that there are very, very few.  Lots of opportunity for the venture funds, some public companies like Nordic that are doing great, but are valued for that.

I like ams sensor.  How did they do?

Unterpremstaetten, Austria (19 January 2015) - ams (SIX: AMS), a leading worldwide manufacturer of high performance sensor and analog solutions, pre-announces fourth quarter 2014 revenues of EUR 139.0 million, above the upper end of revenue guidance of EUR 133-138 million, and first quarter 2015 revenues expected to grow quarter-on-quarter contrary to typical seasonality. At the same time, ams sees fourth quarter 2014 operating profitability impacted by a faster-than-expected addition of over 40 design engineers and an additional design center as well as two one-time effects. As a consequence, fourth quarter 2014 operating (EBIT) margin is expected to be around 23%, below previously communicated guidance.

Realizing the planned expansion of engineering resources to cover a full multi-year project pipeline earlier than expected, ams has successfully added more than 40 design engineers and a design center in Japan already in the fourth quarter 2014. The resulting increase in R&D expenses together with usual project-related quarterly R&D expense movements is expected to account for about half of the expected margin differential. The two one-time effects, which are each expected to account for about a quarter of the expected margin differential, are certain additional supplier costs in the fourth quarter 2014 to satisfy very strong customer demand for ams’ consumer solutions and an exceptional one-time customer-related write-off resulting from a product improvement for an Asian customer.

For the first quarter 2015, ams expects revenues to grow quarter-on-quarter in strong contrast to typical sector seasonality with first quarter revenues expected up to 5% higher compared to the fourth quarter 2014. This expectation is based on a confirmed total order backlog of EUR 131.3 million at 31 December 2014 (30 September 2014: EUR 119.8 million; 31 December 2013: EUR 76.6 million).

ams will publish its complete fourth quarter and full year 2014 results including first quarter 2015 guidance on 3 February 2015 at 7.15 am CET as previously communicated.

They have done well; I like their gesture sesnors, their move into chemical sensors, spectrometry, they get it. Did I buy them?  No.

slide 8 at Needham,

optical gesture, a work in progress.

Its an ecosystem sort of thing.  So expect that we will hear more about it down the line a bit.  

QUIK can do it in house also as they hired for this skill set...

The following experience is highly desired:

Prior experience in developing sensor context classification and gesture recognition algorithms using motion, optical 

and environmental sensors,audio classification, real-time daily human activity recognition/tracking, health and fitness monitoring

that mix and match algo store will be very complete one day soon.