Plug Power (PLUG) reported $4.5 million in sales, up 158% from last year and well above the $3.3 million consensus. They lost 17 cents a share, compared with the consensus for 15 cents, with about a third of that due to the operating results of acquired companies.

They shipped 25 GenCore systems in quarter compared with 15 in last year's third quarter, and also shipped 23 GenDrive units. They've shipped 157 GenCore systems year-to-date and have another 110 systems shipped and waiting for installation, after which they can recognize the revenues. However, they had to take 213 systems out of the backlog when their Kuwait distributor decided to drop fuel cell products, so the backlog is down to 294 systems. That's still above last year's level of 202 systems, but it means that they will not meet their 2007 goal to install at least 400 GenCore systems. That, in turn, means that they will not reach their goal to reduce manufacturing costs by 25% over the year.

One of the big drivers for the next few years will be a new FCC requirement that wireless carriers maintain emergency backup power for a minimum of 24 hours for central offices and eight hours for cell sites, remote switches, and digital loop carrier system remote terminals that are normally powered from local AC commercial power. The company just finished a test for a major wireless carrier showing that GenCore meets the FCC requirements by providing backup power to nearly a dozen sites for a full seven-day grid outage, simulating the potential need arising from natural disasters like hurricanes or ice storms.

Plug Power used $10.4 million in cash during the quarter and had $180 million left at the end of September. With the new FCC regulations, it is a question of when their business explodes, not if.

Many tech companies, like Intel (INTC) and Motorola (MOT), have loved WiMAX technology for years, but Cisco's (CSCO) executives, especially their Chief Development Officer, have publicly and frequently criticized WiMax. But now it looks like Cisco has seen the light.

Recently, Cisco confirmed the Year of WiMAX by acquiring a private supplier of mobile WiMAX equipment, Navini Networks, for $330 million. A Cisco spokesman downplayed the U.S. market and said: "We were hearing from a lot of customers in the emerging markets about their interest in WiMAX and how they were getting very serious about it. Through this acquisition, we are focused on delivering broadband wireless in emerging markets, such as India, China and Eastern Europe. In these countries, cell phone penetration is high, but broadband penetration is not. And that's largely because of the lack of infrastructure."

The excitement for 2008 is Fixed WiMAX for business and home connections. Every Fixed WiMAX equipment supplier is showing rapid growth, lots of trials, and lots of requests for quotes. Mobile WiMAX recently received approval from the International Telecommunication Union as a third-generation wireless technology. Motorola and Intel will have products for mobile WiMAX in the market sometime in 2008.

Intel will introduce processors with built-in WiMAX in the first few months of the year, and they will be in almost all laptops after midyear. In a conference call, Sprint Nextel (S) said that they are continuing to prepare for soft launches of WiMAX in the Baltimore, Washington and Chicago markets later this year. They have slowed down their capital spending on WiMAX and have not signed a final deal with Clearwire (CLWR) yet. But Clearwire is going ahead hammer and tongs, so I think it is fair to say that 2007 is the Year of Fixed WiMAX and 2008 is the Year of Mobile WiMAX.

SiRF Technologies (SIRF) jumped almost 30% last week after they clobbered Wall Street expectations. The conference call was vastly entertaining, because the predominant emotion was disbelief. Half of these people couldn't spell GPS two years ago, and they have no idea how big this is going to be.

First, the numbers. SIRF reported $91.2 million in sales and 29 cents a share pro forma, far above expectations for $85.7 million and 22 cents a share. The company cited strength in System on a Chip (SoC) sales incorporating technology from the Centrality acquisition, where they booked $8.8 million versus their guidance for about $5 million. They also had good sales in automobile GPS devices like GM's OnStar system. The company suggested that wireless revenues in the cellular handset and other markets could double or triple next year, and wireless was 20% of September-quarter revenues. All of Wall Street's estimates for 2008 are much too low.

The next wave of GPS devices will be as a feature of other products like cell phones, and today SIRF has very little competition in the SoC market. Qualcomm (QCOM) has products for the CDMA market, and I'm sure Broadcom (BRCM) and STMicro (STM) will get into this area in 2008. But SIRF is well ahead of the curve, and it takes a long time for a cellular service provider to quality test and approve a new handset design.

Some new applications inline from SiRF include 3-D GPS, which gives you a screen presentation that looks like you are driving through a city rather than crawling over a street map. Others include area information like nearby restaurants and movies, with ratings, coupons and so on. Some have mobile digital TV -- recall that SIRF bought a mobile TV receiver company in 2006.

These products sound super cool, and I love that SiRF is far ahead of the GPS competition.

Last week, following Wednesday's drop in the U.S. market, the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong dropped 3.2%, and the Shanghai Composite Index lost 4.9% -- its biggest one-day decline in four months. It's clear that the Chinese market is tied to the U.S. and vice-versa, through trade if nothing else. But the connection also goes the other way, and I think that the Chinese stock market implosion that is coming will be another force dragging down U.S. markets.

In 1997, when Great Britain handed over Hong Kong to Chinese rule, Hong Kong stocks rallied sharply for the six months before the transition, and everyone bought the "red chip" stocks that had strong connections to the mainland. About two weeks after the turnover, that bubble popped.

This one is worse. Shanghai Exchange investors have not been able to buy stocks outside of the mainland, and they've never been through a bear market. They think stocks only go up, with dips like yesterday just providing a chance to buy more shares cheaply. They mostly buy the state-owned companies because they appear connected and protected. In reality, many of those companies are technically bankrupt or don't make any money under honest accounting.
Consequently, shares of a stock like PetroChina (PTR) trade on the Shanghai Exchange at a premium to what they trade for in Hong Kong or on the NYSE. How much of a premium? Triple. You read that right. PetroChina is worth 200% more at Shanghai prices than in Hong Kong or New York. Based on the Shanghai price, the company is worth $1 trillion. That, my friends, is a very big bubble. Warren Buffet recently sold all of his PetroChina shares.

As you know, some of the mania has spilled over to Hong Kong, because China was about to allow mainland investors to buy on that exchange. But over the weekend, Premier Wein Jia-bao said that Beijing needs to do more research and planning before changing the rules for individuals. Whoops! The 50% run-ups in individual Chinese stocks over the last three months suddenly look a tad enthusiastic. Mutual funds will still be allowed to invest in Hong Kong, and I suspect it could be years before the rules are changed for individuals. Between now and then, I am still looking for a huge correction.

Intel (INTC) unveiled the new Penryn chip family last week, which uses 45-nanometer processing. At 45 nanometers, they can fit 30 million transistors on the head of a pin. Penryn also incorporates the metallic alloy hafnium in place of silicon dioxide as an insulator. This is the most dramatic shift in chip production in 40 years. It is that technology that makes me confident Moore's Law and the whole technology revolution will continue past 2010 by at least another 10 years. This new technology also underlies Intel's Nehalem chip family coming in 2008, and the Silverthorne processor family about to be announced to compact, portable Internet-connected devices like ultra-mobile PCs.

CNET Networks (CNET) is acquiring FindArticles.com from LookSmart (LOOK) for $20.5 million. That's less than half of what they just sold WebShots, their photo-sharing site, for. FindArticles.com has a database of 11 million articles going back to 1998 from newspapers, magazines, journals and similar publications. The difference between WebShots and FindArticles is that it is easy to offer advertising with FindArticles, even if it only Google Adsense. That's very hard to do with WebShots, because the computer can't tell what the photograph content is. So CNet will be able to use FindArticles to more effectively advertise and attract users -- smart move.