Monday, October 16, 2006

Calls of Note Part 6

Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster and Michael J. Olson out on Sonic Solutions (NASDAQ:SNIC), saying that they have found that Picasa, a free, digital photo software download from Google, is licensing Sonic's burning engine. This enables users to organize, edit, and burn photos to a CD or turn photos into a slideshow and burn it to DVD.

Sonic stated in the June quarter conference call that it recently signed another deal with Google, in which it would integrate Sonic's technology, leverage the Roxio brand, and its large media savvy user base. Sonic could not give details of the deal, but did say that its relationship with Google will impact the model in 2006. This is another example of Sonic's continued efforts to partner with best-in-class companies and brands to leverage the company's multi-channel distribution network.

Piper found Sonic mentioned in two help/support links. The first relates to the question of spyware within third party software and states: "An example of third party software is Picasa's CD/ DVD burning component that is supplied by Sonic." The other example is found in the script of a user that was trying to burn a DVD and was seeking help from a support link. The script included the text:

ORIGINAL FILENAME="PRIMOSDK.DLL" INTERNAL NAME="PrimoSDK"

LEGAL COPYRIGHT="Copyright 2002 Sonic Solutions."

Notablecalls: Nice work, Gene and Micheal! However, I'm not sure about the financial impact - while Picasa is very neat & convenient, I don't think it is very widely used. Wouldn't call this note actionable.

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