Natural MicroSystems Corporation

Our products depend upon the continued availability of licensed technology from third parties.
We currently license and will continue to license certain technology integral to our products and services, such as protocols, from third parties. While we believe that much of this technology is available from multiple sources, any difficulties in acquiring third-party technology licenses, or in integrating the related third-party technology into our products, could result in delays in product development or upgrade until equivalent technology can be identified, licensed and integrated. We may require new licenses in the future as our business grows and technology evolves. We cannot assure you that these licenses will continue to be available to us on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.

The ongoing evolution of industry standards may adversely affect demand for our products and increase our costs.
Our success depends on both the evolution of industry standards for new technologies and our products’ compatibility with multiple industry standards. Many technological developments occur prior to the adoption of the related industry standard. The absence of an industry standard related to a specific technology may prevent market acceptance of products using that technology, or may result in the development of products not compatible with ultimately adopted standards, which would limit demand for our products. We intend to develop products compatible with other technological advancements and may develop these products prior to the adoption of industry standards related to these technologies. As a result, we may incur significant expenses and losses due to lack of customer demand, unusable purchased components for these products and the diversion of our engineers from future product development efforts. Further, we may develop products that do not comply with the eventual industry standard, which could limit our ability to sell these products. If the industry develops new standards, we may not be able to design and manufacture new products in a timely fashion that meet these new standards. Even after the adoption of industry standards, the future success of our products depends on widespread market acceptance of their underlying technologies.

Defects in our products or problems arising from the use of our products together with other vendors’ products may seriously harm our business and reputation.
Products as complex as ours may contain known and undetected errors or performance problems. Defects are frequently found during the period immediately following introduction and initial implementation of new products or enhancements to existing products. Although we attempt to resolve all errors that we believe would be considered serious by our customers before implementation, our products are not error-free. These errors or performance problems could result in lost revenues or customer relationships and could be detrimental to our business and reputation generally. Additionally, reduced market acceptance of our services due to errors or defects in our technology would harm our business by reducing our revenues and damaging our reputation. In some of our contracts, we have agreed to indemnify our customers against certain liabilities arising from defects in our products, but we do not carry insurance policies covering this type of liability. In addition, our customers generally use our products together with their own products and products from other vendors. As a result, when problems occur in the network, it may be difficult to identify the source of the problem. These problems may cause us to incur significant warranty and repair costs, divert the attention of our engineering personnel from our product development efforts and cause significant customer relations problems. To date, defects in our products or those of other vendors’ products with which ours are used by our customers have not had a material negative effect on our business. However, we cannot be certain that a material negative effect will not occur in the future.

Because we derive a significant portion of our revenues from international sales, we are susceptible to currency fluctuations and other risks.
Sales to customers outside North America accounted for approximately 27% of our revenues in 1999, and we believe a material portion of our domestic sales results in the use of our products outside North America. Since customers generally evaluate our purchase price as expressed in their own currency, changes in foreign currency exchange rates may hurt our sales in other countries. In addition, some of our sales transactions are denominated in local currency and we do not mitigate the currency risk by engaging in currency-hedging transactions. An increase in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies could make our products less competitive on a price basis in international markets or adversely impact the US dollar yield from sales transactions denominated in local currency.

Other risks arising from our international business include political instability or recessions in other countries, the imposition of trade and tariff regulations by foreign governments and the difficulties in managing operations across disparate geographic areas. These or other factors may limit our ability to sell our products and services in other countries.