Dialogue Technology (Chinese: 江川科技) is a technology company, founded in 1990 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. The company's flagship product is the Flybook—an ultraportable convertible tablet computer with integrated 3G.
Founded in 1990 by Mr. Jack Lee, Dialogue Tech. Corporation initially focused on the research and development of touch screen and wireless applications to be integrated in innovative notebooks. The Dialogue group globally now has 200 staff, and a turnover of 150M US$.
The Flybooks were a true Mobile Internet Device (MID) with full WiFi and Cellular onboard capability while maintaining the full power of a laptop computer in a highly transportable format.
The first Flybook model (A33i) was powered by a Transmeta Crusoe processor. Newer models that arrived in May 2006 were powered by Intel's Pentium M ULV processor and the latest models use the Core 2 Duo ULV CPU and Centrino platform.
In 2004, the first Flybook was launched on the European market with the support of Holbe Italy later re-named to Holbe Dialogue Europe, therefore gained a stable position in the High-end market dedicated to professionals, people on the move. With the entrepreneurial ability of Gino and Alan d'Noforio - Flybook Italy was born. Over the next 5 years this Italian venture had great success by selling Flybooks to Telecom Italia.
The first failure occurred for Flybook when the Holbe Dialogue distributor had disagreements with Taiwan. For reasons still unknown, that relationship ended. What was left was for Dialogue to start a new relationship and Lupo Rossi was approached to reopen Dialogue Technology Europe. A large shipment of failed systems and Taiwan's lack of response was the first sign of financial trouble in Taipei. Soon thereafter, Italy lost the largest customer to the Flybook family, Telecom Italia, probably due to their inability to ship products as the products received were all dead on arrival. So the collapse began. Additionally, Dialogue also built a large and expensive support base that resulted in financial failure when Telcom Italia stopped purchasing Flybooks. What followed was a reorganization, lost ability to produce new inventory, non payment of millions of dollars US, and eventual dissolution.
The result of the collapse of this Italian distributor of Flybooks was that headquarters Dialogue Technology in Taiwan had to stop developing and producing their notebooks. Further Dialogue Technology Corporation USA, which was launched in 2007, lost financial support from Taiwan. When Taiwan opened their North and South American effort, they committed to providing support to this new company, which was entirely owned by Mr. Jack Lee, founder and CEO of Dialogue Technology.
In the early part of 2009, Mr. Jack Lee sent his brother Michael Lee to the US to try to build the business as the US market was Dialogue's last hope of survival. Poor management, lack of US business savvy, and Mr. Michael Lee's lack of citizenship, or right to work in the US created a very sketchy business from that point forward. The company moved to the Silicon Valley area in mid year 2009 and Taiwan took complete control over the US company's entire range of operations. Under the control of Michael Lee, the US branch failed. Additional interest to note, when the Italian branch office failed, it was also under the control of Mr. Michael Lee.
In the 3 years since the collapse of the Italian business and the financial impact it had on Dialogue business in Taiwan and the United States. Dialogue owes many hundreds of thousands of dollars to employees, distributors, resellers, freight companies, landlords and the like and left the US market completely in early 2010 and does not respond to e-mails for payment.
There has been a site set up to collect a list of creditors left behind: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AngxSKB0xMoedHcwcjByRU1tdVhNT1dEa2dGelExckE&hl=en&authkey=CJ2TjtQK Their US operation is in the process of filing for bankruptcy protection. The link is below: http://www.canb.uscourts.gov/calendars/341/sj/wu/341-calendar-carol-wu-101210-san-jose Current FlyBook product series include V5 (8.9") and VM(12.1").