It does look like, strategically, that MSFT seems to have decide to allow "service providers" to do enterprise management of keys, and that on that, INTC/MFE hopes to compete with Wave along with whatever, Trend/Winmagic/Credant etc variably come up with as time goes by.
INTC/MFE is weakened by their position, illustrated by awk ... they are stuck in a cluster of proprietary, high heat mega-processors all built around platform first solutions that simply don't accommodate the OTHER platforms. I, however, am not the sort of investor that easily discounts INTC. Their margins in silicon are impressive, they can screw with anybody anytime anywhere on the strength of that. And they know it.
ARM is ARM, arm doesn't pick solutions, solutions pick ARM.
TZ? Obviously, Wave and their considerable IP seem to not be part of TZ. Indeed, the applet swapping patent, the E2 patent, seems to be worth all of the BTUs the paper it is written on yield when burned. I see no evidence the E2 patent means anything to anybody anywhere. It is a casualty of a company with 5 or 10 patents pretending the y have protected property inthe face of companies with 100s of related patents.
Even Victor, back in ITRU days, pumped out more patents in a year than Wave has done since inception. Wave seems to think you write a patent (preferable just one) and that AOL, Sarnoff, AAPL etc bow, and that you chuckle about it on TV).
Sorry, scoreboard says NO.
So Wave, a company with NO protected property having witnessed the creation of iTunes on their IP (according to Wave) and the development of TZ (on things it seems they really kinda pretended were theirs) have demonstrated that when it comes to IP, controlling it,and monetizing it ... they are a bum on skid row.
So back to point ... it seems MSFT has settled on just trying to continue to win the OS wars and allow key management to be a third party solution. It gives space, ducks the evil empire issues, it seems for now they are good with that.
So Wave is to fight with INTC, and all the various Wave-like comapnies (Winmagic, Credant, Trend+Mobile Armor, Safenet) and the veritible cacophany of alliances, comarketing, and combined products they all afford.
On that: Wave has Dell ... Wave IS DDP-A, no small feat, even if Dell is paying less for it these days.
It looks like Wave will be that for Samsung too.
So Wave stys in the battle with its few enterprise customers an couple of OEMs always hoping for a day where they can achieve mass DoD deployment over the incumbents before the incumbents offer their own WEM etc.
I give the odds at 20/80. I believe the incumbents have well proved who they are and why they are there and why their shareholders are ultimately rewarded.
They crush bugs.
I think the window is dreadfully brief. Should Wave land the DIB WEM in Q4-Q2 and of course the 2 new 8-10m deals and really move some product with DRS ... then they still stand a chance.
Its 20/80
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