Nasdaq-listed Medis Technologies has just become the first micro fuel cell company to receive a major order - $50 million - for their disposable portable power packs for consumer electronics. Consumer Electronics are widely considered the holy grail for micro fuel cells with 1.5 billion portable devices in use around the world, forecast to become 2 billion by 2007.

In this very interesting interview in Red Herring, CEO Robert K. Lifton talks about the prospects for his company.

The technology is unusual because instead of using methanol, Medis prefers sodium borohydride as the lower cost fuel of choice. What's more, all those futuristic programmes and pictures you see of laptops and mobile phones running on internal fuel cells just might never happen.

As Lifton points out, that would require getting 1000s of Original End Manufacturers to change their design around a given fuel cell. "Integration doesn't make sense as a business proposition". So the Medis Power Pack only plugs in externally, requiring no input from the OEMs which could have lost years in redeveloping, retooling and retesting.

Very practical.

Probably one of the reasons why Medis will be the first to market, ahead of NEC, Sanyo, Sony, Toshiba et al.