QuickLogic - Notion Ink Partnership story gets more interesting

In a post a few days ago, I commented on why I'm skeptical of this being a partnership. Over the last few days, this story has become more interesting - so read on.

First, let's look at Rohan Shravan's statements on the Notion Ink blog (bold emphasis mine)

"Our partner for VEE and DPO technology, as you already know is: Quicklogic (image)"

"both of which are a part of a single brilliant package developed by one of our partners (who also holds the trademarks for VEE and DPO). In the next blog we will introduce our partner and what exactly DPO does"

So, anyone with a rudimentary understanding of what the term "partnership" means (as opposed to 'supplier', for e.g. Apple is not my partner because I purchased an iPad.), will infer that there is some sort of a mutual agreement between the companies and they're doing something together.

Now, let's take a step ahead. On May 1st, QuickLogic had its 2012 Q1 conference call. You can listen to the call by registering here. You can read the full transcript here (though the Q&A is not in there). Perhaps it was my blog post, or something else, one of the analysts pointed out about Notion Ink's claim of working with Quicklogic and posed a question to the CEO of QuickLogic about the "nature of the engagement or prospective customer"  (you can listen to it around the time in the image below. It doesn't have a time tracker)



And this is what Andrew Pease, the CEO said (I'm summarizing/paraphrasing - listen to the call for the full detail)

"First of all I was  surprised to see that appear on his blog..... we have no indication of the production schedule..."

He goes on to say multiple times that he has no indication of what the production schedule is. Think again - on his blog, the Notion Ink CEO calls them a "partner", touts the technology, and yet the partner is surprised to see the blog post and has no clue of the production schedule! It seems they unwittingly became a "partner" and they didn't even know that. The QuickLogic CEO does indeed make a few complimentary comments on NI (though he seems to think Adam 2 is for the Indian market) and says  "they're grateful to be mentioned on the blog", of course he'd say that - you don't want to diss your potential customers. Even if they're Notion Ink.

Read that again. The CEO of the "partner" was very surprised to see this on Notion Ink's blog.  Shravan pulled a fast one on this again - think this from QuickLogic's perspective, it is a surprise.

Also, given this is a public company that is trying hard to do well, associations or implications of any potential revenue streams will garner interest. This post on Yahoo finance is an example. And therefore, companies like Notion Ink should at least have the sense to clear their post with the partner company before splashing announcements. Recollect that he called Texas Instruments a "partner" and made a "press release" except that I've never found an equivalent from TI.

And as far as the followers of Notion Ink are concerned, just remind yourself once more if they are being honest in how they communicate. Remember once more that one of their most critical technology suppliers has no indication of the production schedule even at this point.