The Value of MicroVision to it's share holders is going to be a portion of the total value it provides to people.... what will that be?
The Value of Use..
"I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list....That didn't look so good, but then someone at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle blew the condor away. That's what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."
--- Steve Jobs
The Near Eye display will allow us to use that bicycle for our minds everywhere we go, everywhere we are, and with everything we do. Increasing efficiency, improving productivity. Allowing creativity to be harnessed much more easily, errors to be found and corrected earlier.
The benefits of a PC will no longer limited to a desktop, laptop, or something we have to sit down and focus on. It could be there all the while we are doing.
Kipman wasn't lying when he said they built that new game-changing device around the display that they... er... (MICROVISION) invented... While I think they're scoundrels for claiming credit for the display it is a testament to how amazing it is.
Taqtile's motto is "Everyone is an expert." That illustrates the value very well.
Taqtile
My visit to Taqtile:
making people who don't know act as though they know. Giving them a knowledge advantage immediately. (You can walk into a facility and perform processes recorded by an expert. You don't have to be the expert to do it.)
Particularly important is Knowledge Capture
The results of this go directly to the bottom line and the efficiency improvements companies have recorded with Hololens are stunning. (a reliable 10% improvement is the stuff of wet dreams. They're getting 90% improvement.) Efficiency improvement
WHO IS WORKING WITH HOLOLENS?
King County Wastewater Treatment
Will it GAME?
Do not forget Pokemon Go. Games are HUGE, and I think the effort to come up with games for this will be huge... do not forget that there was a special introduction of a gaming company at one of the Hololens presentations.
Gaming? Microsoft bought Minecraft, has it for Hololens... and it's really popular.
Minecraft Second Most Popular Game Ever
How many companies to make AR devices using MicroVision's display?
Well, we know Microsoft, Apple, Google, Magic Leap, Facebook, and probably the big computer makers (Dell, Lenovo, Sony, Acer, etc.) will all want in on Augmented Reality.
(Remember, Kipman said "anyone can make their own hololens" and Trimble IS making their own Hololens.)
Apple is doing it --- there are enough patents and leaks to show this. Some of what they are doing is in the open with their "AR Kit."
Google Had "Glass"
Magic Leap is AR (associated with Google)
I'm nearly certain that Hololens1 and Magic Leap used the same display.
Facebook has AR/VR -- And also has a substantial facility right up the road from MicroVision HQ. It is unmarked and apparently. secret. (There is nothing on the outside that says "Facebook," nothing on any vehicle that brags about Facebook, no people wearing anything labeled with it can be seen outside. -- I took a picture of the front door a couple of years ago, and my phone did ask me if I wanted to tag the picture I took at Oculus.
Behind it is another facility that is part of Microsoft, and there is a shuttle running between the two campuses.
They will all need the best near-eye display they can get.
There is nothing better yet on the horizon that looks like it will be serviceable. When that appears, it may still be years before it's usable and possible to manufacture in quantity.
A side-note here. We may look at a device and think that it looks simple -- the good things are. MicroVision's core tech, which is essentially a vibrating mirror, looks really simple. Getting it to work as it has to -- and then also assembling the components is anything but simple. Making the sub-components-- the mirror, the magnets, etc., to the precision required is not a simple process. Developing a reliable way to do this in quantity had to be extraordinarily difficult and time consuming. This has made it difficult in the past for holders of MicroVision -- because we were waiting, and it seemed like nothing was happening. This is now a hurdle that MicroVision has cleared. Any potential competing technology has yet to clear this hurdle, and it's a significant one. The distance between prototype and released product is huge.
What are the "killer" applications?
An important question with any new technology. (If you have the first fax machine -- it's cool but useless... there has to be something to DO with it.)This should not be a problem with AR.
Personal computers were around prior to the early 1980's. They were basically toys, things to tinker with, until the killer app, arrived.
In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video game console, software, a programming language, a software platform, or an operating system.[1] In other words, consumers would buy the (usually expensive) hardware just to run that application. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.[2][3]For the PC the killer application was the spreadsheet. It took what could be an astonishingly tedious task (prone to errors) and made it happen in a twinkle. (No time to explain it in detail here, but trust me and check here: Visicalc BBC)
After the arrival of the spreadsheet, the PC went crazy.
The killer app for Hololens?
There are several already. Trimble has one - Overlay of design in the physical world. This increases efficiency in construction hugely and doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how it would. It will save a lot of time and therefore a lot of money. Problems will become apparent more quickly, be solved sooner, and best -- they'll be solved while they're potential problems instead of real ones.
"Benefits every industry that deals with 3D spatial data." Nearly everything we deal with is "3D." -- so the appeal is broad.
Knowledge Capture. This can be used already, and it's huge. You don't need to "train" someone for a job, you have your smartest person do it.... and those who come after can copy. (Everyone's an expert.)
What I am looking forward to most, is being able to learn languages.
An endlessly patient teacher that scans the environment and labels everything in the target language? Sign me up.
How big will the use of Augmented Reality Be?
Microsoft itself said that Hololens would be bigger than the PC.Microsoft's Stock was worth about $0.09 in 1986; 10 years later in 1996 it was worth $9.00 (A 9,900% Gain.) If we consider Microsoft until the introduction of the X-Box (2001) You get about $30/share (A 33,000% Gain) -- That's perspective on "how big can augmented reality be."
The PC is huge, because it's nearly ubiquitous. It's everywhere. Hololens will be more everywhere, because it can be 'more everywhere' -- not anchored to a desk, table or lap. If you want to use a PC you have to look away from whatever else might be around and focus on the PC... not so with hololens.
In 1976 the number of PCS being used in the US was effectively zero, Apple showed up then and sold some. Then Radio Shack hat the TSR-80 --- by the year 2000 PCs were literally everywhere. They continue to get better.
How much will they earn?
(and how much will someone pay for those earnings?)
Any answer to this question is guesswork. The value will be significant, because the value it brings to the user will be significant.
There is no good way to come up with this number... {I readily admit that this is guesswork. You are reading guesses. Don't make your decisions based on my guesswork, base your decisions on your own guesswork. If you have a solid critique or method of guessing that you think is better than mine, I'd be happy to read, consider and possibly post it too.... if we get enough people working on it, we might actually arrive at a good guess.
To do this, I'm going to plop some possibly numbers into the Personal Computer "killer application" and see where the numbers lead.
Method 1 (I claim no accuracy, this is a framework.)
- $70 Billion Euros for the next four years --- my SWAG then is $100 billion in the next FIVE years, which is my preferred time horizon. (since a euro is 1.1 USD I'll consider them equivalent.)
- Assume that a display would account for about 10% of the price of the computer. ($900 computer, $900 software + $200 for a monitor)
- Use 10% of the total AR market for display
- Use 1/2 of the 10% as the MicroVision share.
Using this method my SWAG(scientific wild-ass guess) is $5Billion (Divide into the 140 million shares = $35/share (To be conservative, cut it in half again) = $17/share (This vertical)
After spending some time thinking about it, that's the only guess I'm willing to make here... it's taking an "accepted number" and extrapolating. Trying to anticipate the market with all its variables is a daunting task, and probably not worth the effort, because EACH stage is guess work. I could be off by miles already -- but I think the guess is reasonable and the theory sound.
Some of the basis I'm using came from the video below. (It says $70 Billion in the next four years)
Errors happen all the time with data... they happen even more with speculative future-anticipating (I know this) Read this for some background: I'm skeptical of Data
Quick Summary so far:
Interactive Display SWAG = $14Near Eye Display SWAG = $17-35
LiDAR............................... = ?
Display only.......................= ?
= $31-49
