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 Technology
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Communication Equipment
About: Andrea Electronics Corp.
(ANDR-OTC: BB)
65 Orville Drive
Bohemia, NY 11716
Phone: 631-917-1800
Company
Profile:
Andrea Electronics is a
leading developer of hardware and software microphone technologies which
optimize the performance of voice user interfaces for automotive telematics
systems and auto PCs, personal digital assistants, Internet telephony,
desktop dictation and videoconferencing applications.
Andrea Electronics believes that it possesses both the technological and
engineering capability to deliver truly innovative audio input solutions at
a cost-competitive price, a capability that it believes serves to set the
Company apart from its competition. Perhaps most important, Andrea
Electronics possesses the unique ability to embed, scale or customize these
unique microphone solutions for various environments and/or hardware
platforms. In addition to its digital audio software, the Company also
offers a complete line of Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) and Noise
Canceling (NC) PC headsets for voice applications in which a headset is
desired, such as with wearable PCs and in call center environments.
Commitments to research and development and the acquisition of key
technologies have enabled Andrea Electronics to carve a niche in a
converging communications marketplace. As a result, the Company is building
a strong leadership position as a provider of front-end audio input
solutions for a new generation of voice recognition applications that are
emerging to bring productivity and ease-of-use communication solutions to
home, office and mobile environments. Andrea Electronics’ technological
capability, coupled with growing relationships with industry leaders, have
helped the Company and its technologies to gain acceptance and support from
a broad range of speech solutions providers as well as with the end-user
community. In addition to providing state-of-the-art audio input products,
Andrea Electronics prides itself on its full service e-commerce and
fulfillment capabilities, demonstrating its commitment to deliver an
unparalleled level of customer service.
 Douglas
J. Andrea
Executive Chairman, President and CEO
Douglas J. Andrea, has been
President and Chief Executive Officer since January 2005, Chairman of the
Board of Directors since November 2001, a Director of the Company since 1991
and Corporate Secretary since 2003. He was Co-Chairman and Co-Chief
Executive Officer of the Company from November 1998 until August 2001. He
served as Co-President of the Company from November 1992 to November 1998,
as Vice President - Engineering of the Company from December 1991. Mr.
Andrea holds multiple patents in the acoustics field and has a Bachelor of
Science degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse University.
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com, Published – March 4, 2011
CEOCFO: Mr. Andrea,
what was your vision when you took over again as CEO of Andrea Electronics?
Mr. Andrea:
The company has been involved in innovating audio products since my
grandfather founded the company in 1934. When I became the sole CEO and
president of Andrea Electronics, my goal was to preserve the technology, the
intellectual property portfolio, preserve existing customers and product
line and then rebuild the organization for future growth potential based on
our core competencies.
CEOCFO:
What does Andrea have and what is the technology?
Mr. Andrea:
It is a very exciting time for us. Since 2005 when I took over as the sole
president of the company, we started to focus on continuing to enhance the
user voice interface for computers and mobile devices. Our technology is a
form of digital noise reduction. We have a few different technologies, one
is noise reduction, a second is a stereo microphone that does a directional
beam forming for enhancing the sensitivity of the direction pickup of the
microphone while canceling noise around the outside of that cone, as well as
a full duplex echo cancellation. This product can turn you P.C. into a
high-quality speakerphone. Over the past few years we have been revising and
refreshing existing product lines, while also slowly investing in new
products for the future needs and trends in the electronics industry.
CEOCFO:
What is it that makes your products different?
Mr. Andrea:
We have two sections or segments of our product line, one is software and
noise reduction, which is a digital technology, and the other one is
high-end headsets for primarily speech recognition. We have been known in
the industry for providing, designing, and manufacturing high quality
microphones, where computer applications such as speech recognition for a
product like Dragon Naturally Speaking, would rely on a very high-quality
microphone to get high accuracy for these software applications. Our high
quality and our ability to deliver very good signal, which is voice over any
type of background noise, really makes these other products work much more
efficiently and accurately.
CEOCFO:
Do you have a typical customer?
Mr. Andrea:
Over the past few many years we have been prominently an OEM manufacturer
and we have made products that will go into other people’s boxes. In the
past, we were a prime supplier to IBM Via Voice speech recognition software.
Up to this current date we have been a supplier to Nuance, which makes the
Dragon Naturally Speaking, so we would send product to them to go into their
retail boxes. We also sell mostly the aftermarket products, like headsets,
to business. These may be large Fortune 500 companies that are now using
headsets for distance learning and collaboration, as well as for the large
global companies that want to communicate over the computer; they need a
computer headset. So we have had a very good success marketing directly to
businesses.
CEOCFO:
Do you expect that to continue, or do you expect to branch out and reach
individuals that might want some high quality as well?
Mr. Andrea:
Yes, we have started to target a new product line, which we call the Super
Beam Headset. This product is designed to be very high-quality, but a
combination of both our digital beam forming technology as well as our
headset product line. We have combined the beam forming with the headset and
now we have a headset that no longer requires a boom microphone, which is
the stick part that comes down in front of your mouth and then usually you
have a black foam ball, which is a wind cushion. We have removed that, which
in the past has been one of the complaints from customers; they don’t like
speaking into a close-talking microphone. We see the Super Beam Headset
having a style and a form factor of what has become very popular today
especially with the mobile devices such as iPods and iPhones. It is more of
a headphone looking product, so if you go to our website today you will see
our latest news that we released at the 2011 January Consumer Electronics
Show, where we launched our Super Beam Headsets. We have that information on
our website and it gives you all the benefits of this new product. It will
be a premium product and we feel that the retail market should have fairly
good success with it.
CEOCFO:
Is the public actively looking for a better product?
Mr. Andrea:
The trend in terminal end, accessory or aftermarket products for computers
and smart phones is that people are willing to spend more money for a
premium product because these devices are now becoming their central mode of
information, entertainment and communication. Therefore, if they want the
best user experience out of these devices, laptop computers, notebook
computers, these mobile devices are also becoming a multi-media
entertainment device. It stores your music, but you also do your work on it,
you also communicate to it with voice over IP as well as video conferencing.
So if you are investing in a pair of headphones like our Super Beam Headset,
you are going to be able to enjoy all those applications with the Andrea
Electronics technology portfolio that will enhance the user experience and I
think that our target price points will be in an acceptable range.
CEOCFO:
Is the trend toward more voice and less keypad or keyboarding?
Mr. Andrea:
No, I think you are seeing a trend in a more mobile computing environment
that definitely with the smart phones, people really like texting.
I believe this will continue
to be very popular. There is something about the typing and the instant
gratification of the texting that is not going to go away. However, there
will also be other applications where voice interface with speech
recognition will be beneficial, especially with safety, such as using that
in a car, because you don’t want to text in the car. If you could just speak
to a microphone and that could enable your phone to dial or access email
that could be read to you via text-to-speech, then speech recognition I
think will also play a part and it is gaining in acceptance. In the
communication realm definitely computer communication is just exploding. You
are seeing businesses gravitate towards a computer based Voice over IP
(VoIP) systems. There is just dramatic savings for Voice over IP telephone
systems versus the old traditional telephone lines, as well video
conferencing now is very user-friendly. Applications like Skype are just
growing in leaps and bounds, so we feel that our products really can span
all those mainstream applications. We believe the number of users that would
like a quality headset is actually growing with the products and the new
types of devices that are also emerging in the marketplace.
CEOCFO:
Are you able to work with some of those companies that are working in those
various areas to present your products to their customers?
Mr. Andrea:
Currently one of the areas that we do have very positive revenue in is we
license our noise reduction, beam forming, and echo canceling algorithms to
companies that make the little sound chip that go into computers. Therefore,
our technology is shipping on millions of Dell notebook computers and
millions of HP notebook computers. We do have relationships with some of the
large audio chip manufacturers as well as extended relationships with the
computer manufacturer OEMs such as Dell and HP. We are able to maintain
strategic relationships and business relationships with the large Fortune
500 type companies as well.
CEOCFO:
How will you be rolling out the new product?
Mr. Andrea:
The new product, which is the Super Beam Headset, we will start rolling the
product out in the late spring of this year and we will look at the latest
social media avenues of getting our message out there. We will be sending
samples of the product to strategic bloggers, and technical reviewers;
people in the crafts. We believe that the product will be very demonstrable
as far as its technology and the people will hear the “WOW” effect of the
before and after, with or without noise cancellation and the sound quality
of the device. Therefore, when we launch the product we are going to have a
very targeted public relations program and then build that as the product
enters into distribution. We will continue to invest in getting the news out
of the products performance. We anticipate from our test marketing, that the
product will be well received. We believe that through the word-of-mouth of
social media, people will be very excited about it and that word will
spread. We think that the product will have legs and it will do well.
CEOCFO:
What is the financial picture for Andrea Electronics today?
Mr. Andrea:
Currently the company over the past few years has had yearly sales between
$4.5 and $5 million. We continue on that trend; we have a stable existing
business. In the past two quarters we have achieved profitability, so we are
very cautiously optimistic that we have a good foundation to invest in the
Super Beam products and we hope that will be our new growth engine for the
future.
CEOCFO:
Do you do much investor outreach?
Mr. Andrea:
Currently we have been focused on restructuring the company and getting the
company to be cash flow positive and we feel that we have achieved a level
of foundation where now we want to build the business. When we feel that the
Super Beam product is starting to take a positive sales trend, at that time,
we will have a story that is news worthy and that investors can get behind,
we will then do more outreach. This is one of the first interviews more in
the investor realm. We are excited about what we are working on and we are
going to now start to engage with the investor community and get that story
out there, but we want the story to be something based on fact. We have
tried to be very conservative with our news because we want to manage
people’s expectations and only talk about things that we feel confident
about.
CEOCFO:
In closing, why should investors put Andrea Electronics on their radar
screen and what might people miss or not understand about the company that
they should know?
Mr. Andrea:
If investors look at our new Super Beam products, they are targeted towards
an area in the marketplace that has become very popular with the computer
generation, which is the younger generation today that has really grown up
with digital devices. They are willing to spend money on headphones that are
in the $200 to $300 range. Our two models that we are coming out with, the
Super Beam Buds, which is an earbud version, would be an MSRP of $129 and
then the on-the-ear Super Beam phones, which is more of a head phone will be
$149. We also believe that the price point is in a sweet spot. It is a
premiere type product, but we believe that type of pricing will allow us to
achieve some nice volumes.
I would also say to the shareholders that we have a very strong patent
portfolio. The company has a nice foundation of our balance sheet and we are
currently looking to invest money that we have now into growing the company,
but with a brand new product that is quite revolutionary in our space of
computer headsets. The Super Beam format is something that no one has ever
done before, so it is very unique. It provides a much more convenient
product for people that want to use a headset to communicate, and it has
removed the boom microphone, so now if you are video conferencing you look
more natural, if you are using it to talk over Skype and you want to eat or
drink something, you are free to do that. Therefore, the performance and the
convenience of the product and the sound quality, I think will make it a
winner. We are just continuing to execute on delivering this new product
line as our strategy.
disclaimers
Any reproduction or further distribution of this
article without the express written consent of CEOCFOinterviews.com is prohibited. |
ANDR-Print Version
Recent CEO Interviews, Communication Equipment, Electronics Stock, Super
Beam Headset, Computer Speakers, Noise Reduction Cancellation, Noise
Cancelling PC Head, Business Services, Information
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