Kopin, MicroVision and Vuzx

Comparing these two Vuzix suppliers... 

So, Kopin's chip on the top, MicroVision's entire display engine below. Both featuring $0.25 US. 

So, from Today's Report (The Street/Morgan Stanley)

"DLP generally has the disadvantage of bigger form factor vs. LCoS, yet our read from Vuzix’s press release suggests that this has been overcome. In addition, MicroVision, the solutions provider for laser MEMS micro display technology, became one of Vuzix's key suppliers starting from 2015."

Below is a picture of Kopin's LCOS chip....(the equivalent of the 1mm mems in the MVIS engine) and another picture of Microvision's entire projector engine. (And in some applications it's my understanding that the EPM can be moved or handled with software of the computing platform.) **

Kopin: Capabilities

Kopin has just issued a press release that states their intention to enter the OLED microdisplay market, offering panels that will serve augmented and virtual reality applications. At CES 2017, they will announce more detail on the first panel and demonstrate it in novel optical solutions as well. I will get a sneak peak at these devices before CES, but you will have to wait until January 2017 before I can say more.

Now, Kopin has added OLED to it repertoire of microdisplay technologies. According to Fan, “Kopin is pioneering a new business model for OLED fabrication which we think is the future for expanding availability of OLED microdisplay devices.”

After two years of development, Kopin is now ready to start showing their new OLED-on-Silicon microdisplays. Such a device consists of two key elements: the silicon backplane that contains circuitry to drive the OLED pixels, and the OLED emissive frontplane layer. What is unique about Kopin’s business model is that both of these operations are outsourced to dedicated foundries. All of the design expertise resides within Kopin, but all of the capital investments and infrastructure are external, with manufacturing expertise on both sides. It is the first fully fabless OLED microdisplay business model.

**
The PSE-0403-101/2 display engine is an all-in-one unit combining an integrated photonics module (IPM) containing MEMS and lasers and an electronics platform module (EPM) containing MicroVision’s proprietary ASICS and system control software. Some customers prefer a flexible solution of the IPM and standalone MicroVision ASICS that they can combine with the electronics of the device into which the engine is embedded. The form factor of the IPM, which measures only 4.66 cubic centimeters, is a critical attribute for OEMS considering incorporating pico projectors inside their consumer products. We plan to be ready for mass production in early Q2 2017.   MICROVISION DISPLAYGROUND

Vuzix, Kopin, Microvision

What follows will be simply cutting out all the mentions of microvision from that 10K report.

Chances of this being some kind of "error" are zero.

Vuzix 10K March 2016   "As of March 30, 2016, there were 16,097,951 shares of the registrant’s common stock outstanding."

***

In 2010, our previous largest competitor, MyVu, ceased operations. Its intellectual property assets were sold to unnamed parties in Asia. Other companies that have stated their intention to enter this market when their product development is complete are Lumus and Microvision Corporation. At recent CES tradeshows, Lumus demonstrated a see-through HD optics engine in a pair of Video Eyewear. They have not yet announced a product that is production ready. Microvision has also announced that they are currently focused on the Pico projection markets, as described below, and that they are not planning to introduce a wearable display solution. 

****

We currently purchase almost all of the microdisplays used in our products from Kopin and Microvision. Our relationship with these microdisplay suppliers is generally on a purchase order basis and neither firm has a contractual obligation to provide adequate supply or acceptable pricing to us on a long-term basis. We procure a small percentage of our microdisplays from other sources such as Syndiant and Texas Instruments. While we do not manufacture our components, we own the tooling that is used to make our custom components with the exception of certain authentication chips and connectors that may be required to support industry standard device connectivity. We believe that we are not dependent on our relationships with any supplier other than Kopin or Microvision. Kopin before we sold the defense divisions had also been a significant customer of our night vision display electronics modules and owns just under 3% of our common stock. Some of our accessory products are sourced from third parties as finished goods. We typically have them print our Vuzix brand name on these products of they are co-branded. Such third party products represented less than 5% of our sales in 2015.

****

There are a number of competing providers of microdisplay-based personal display technology, including smart glasses, and we may fail to capture a substantial portion of the personal display market.

In addition to competing with direct view displays, we also compete with microdisplay-based personal display technologies that have been developed by other companies. Our primary personal display competitors include Carl Zeiss, Inc., Sony, Epson, Google, Brother International, 5DT Inc., eMagin Corporation, Oculus VR (Facebook), Kopin Corporation (Kopin), MicroVision, Inc. (Microvision), Lumus Ltd. (Lumus), Kaiser Electro Optics Inc., Toshiba, Garmin, HTC Value, TDG Acquisition Company, LLC, and Accupix of Korea. Oculus, which was purchased by Facebook in March 2014, intends to introduce a very wide field of view head-worn goggle system in spring 2016. Samsung since September 2014 has been shipping a head worn goggle frame, called the Gear VR which allow users to mount their smart phones inside it to create an Oculus content compatible immersive VR system. There are similar smart phone mounting and viewing systems now available from a variety of manufactures ranging from simple ones like the Google Cardboard which can turn most smart phones into a display device to view basic interactive VR content, to more advanced systems similar to the Samsung Gear VR. Numerous other start-up companies have announced their intentions to offer AR smart glass and VR products and developer kits in the near future. In 2015 Razer demonstrated its Open-Source VR Gaming head worn goggle system similar to the Oculus developer kit, and Carl Zeiss demonstrated its VR One, a head worn goggle for existing smart phones with larger direct view screens for VR applications, like the Samsung Gear VR. Further, industry blogs have speculated that companies such as Apple may offer or support VR and AR Video Eyewear products in the near future. In January 2015, Microsoft introduced its Hololens project, a head worn AR smart glass helmet with transparent holographic optics. No pricing, technical details, or formal release date has been released other than developer kits now being available to select developers. Another new company, Magic Leap says it is working on a head-mounted virtual display system for AR applications, however no details have been public regarding its technical capabilities or release date. 

GE Augmented Reality Competition.

Three to five years, everyone using a wearable device.

Very interesting Article


ITWorldCanada

Everything manufactured more recently can be made with a digital twin without much added effort, he adds. But what about that locomotive engine that you only service every 10 years? As more machines are modelled for digital twins from inception, it will make more sense to have AR tools ready to service them.

In just three to five years, Boris says he can’t imagine a person on the plant floor that doesn’t have a wearable device to help them do the job. If you think that sounds unlikely, just consider how you’d react if you were told 10 years ago that everyone on the plant floor would be using an Apple-made tablet.

“Now everyone on the plant floor has an iPad in their hands,” Boris says.

If the ROI is as good as Jenkins says for Upskill’s Skylight system, CIOs will be racing to deploy the technology. Efficiency increases from 30 to 50 per cent the first time that a worker uses the technology – before they’re even accustomed to it, Jenkins says. Companies that adopt Skylight commonly see a 30 per cent increase in quality output and 20 per cent better resource utilization.

Those are numbers worthy of a pilot project, or four.

Read more: http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/how-ge-spurred-augmented-reality-pilots-with-an-internal-wearables-challenge/390130#ixzz4Wyet0ZwW
or visit http://www.itworldcanada.com for more Canadian IT News 

Vuzix taking a shot at Google & Microsoft

This is very much a company to watch. We know they get displays from Microvision (According to Vuzix financial documents) 

The Blade3000 does look like something that people will wear and even wear in public. (Nothing else passes that test) -- so it's something to watch. It is getting attention in the right places.


Entrepreneur

With two titans and a unicorn startup leaving their footprints in the AR field, how can the much smaller Vuzix compete? By aiming lower, says founder and CEO Paul Travers.

"We come from the perspective of practical," he told me at the company's CES booth. "We don't think you need to land the whale. It's a different approach than most companies."

Indeed, its newest device, the Blade 3000, may just be the first piece of AR hardware to be adapted by tech enthusiasts since the Google Glass. The company is aiming to introduce it to the market for under $1,000 this year, with the price dropping to under $500 in 2018. And unlike the $1,500 Google Glass, which had a design that resembled a one-eyed cyborg, the Blade 3000 looks like a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

***

Vuzix, which was founded in 1997, holds more than 41 patents and has 10 additional patents pending, according to its website. It received a $24.8 million investment from Intel in 2015. Travers had worked at Eastman Kodak but said he left after many of his projects were killed by the company. He first started a business making sound cards in a basement and then sold it.

And even though Vuzix has been around for two decades, he still doesn't consider the company successful.

"If you want to succeed at being an entrepreneur, you just have to not quit, have tenacity," Travers said. "You've got to be willing to hang through the hard stuff."

Fox Business on AR Glasses

More mainstream attention, this is good.

Microvision is certainly connected to one of these companies (Vuzix) and suspected to be connected to Lenovo. 

Vuzix claimed they 'depend' on displays from Microvision and Kopin, but do not claim the display for the M3000.


Fox Business -- more at the source.

CES is mostly about companies showing off all manner of new consumer phones, TVs, cars, laptops, and smart devices. But there are always some business innovations to be found among all of the consumer gadgets and gizmos. This year, the enterprise side of CES is all about augmented realityOpens a New Window.  (AR).

Lenovo, at Mobilenapps

Mixed and Augmented Reality at CES 2017

Not heading to CES this year.

I hope I'll be able to see the CES offerings of Microvision sometime shortly after CES.

From the linked report -- most of what we're really curious about doesn't look like it will be at CES - No Hololens, no MagicLeap. Osterhout's offering is apparently a significant improvement over last years, but reports said that it now has a significant weight issue. (It was heavy last year too.)

Vuzix should be very interesting -- it's a known customer of Microvision.



NextRealityNews  - More at the source

• Microsoft - Probably no hardware event, but probably hardware partners
• Occipital - Has a booth in AR Marketplace
• Osterhout R9 Smartglasses -- Will make an appearance
• Magic Leap -- not registered 
• Vuzix -- Has a booth.. M300, Blade 3000 -- known to be a Microvision customer
• Sony - Smart Eyeglasses (monochrome, not designed for consumer use)
• Stereolab Lina -- Not on the vendor list

So Sony, Osterhout and Vuzix... 

Vuzix - Microvision for Near-eye displays

No obvious mention of the Vuzix M300 Glasses on Vuzix Website. 

This may require more digging to be sure, but the initial impression is pretty interesting.

M300 are the glasses that are to go into significant production. 

Kopek's Website -- more to explore for sure.

EXPERTISE IN PRACTICE

Snow2 for Ski Goggles

Recon Instrument’s MOD Live Ski Goggles include Kopin’s WQVGA (428 x 240 resolution) screen and provide skiers and snowboarders with useful information such as speed, jump analytics, distance, pre-loaded trail maps, height and GPS location, while keeping MOD Live users connected to calls and texts via Bluetooth.

Vuzix Corporation’s M100 Smart Glasses

Vuzix Corporation’s M100 Smart Glasses are equipped with Kopin’s White Pearl display module (consisting of CyberDisplay WQVGA, backlight, and optics) and ultra-low-power drive IC. The M100 Smart Glasses provide most of the features and capabilities of a modern smartphone in a hands-free wearable device, including a full color video display that floats in or near your line of sight and helps minimize visual blockage of the real-world view.

Raytheon’s Light Thermal Weapon Sight (LTWS)

Raytheon's light thermal weapon sight (LTWS) combines Raytheon's advanced thermal imaging technology and Kopin's CyberDisplay 640M LV to give soldiers the ability to shoot equally well during the day or night, through battlefield obscurants, in adverse weather and in zero-illumination situations. Weighing less than three pounds, the LTWS is powered by commercially available AA batteries and utilizes an eyecup-activated stand-by mode for power conservation.

Vuzix - working on smart glasses

Vuzix confirmed they are Microvision's customer. (We don't know how much they buy, and they were buying displays from two vendors.) They are looking to go into production on their smart glasses -- and they were helping Google. There are a few dots to connect.

They do intend to roll out production

"As a preferred partner in the Vuzix Industrial Partner (VIP) developer program, Ubimax received and shared the M300 Smart Glasses with customers currently using the M100 technology, including shipping giant DHL and automaker Daimler, so users could become acclimated with the new technology before full-scale production.  After a successful pilot program showed the operational benefits of the M100 series powered with Ubimax's X-Pick software, DHL recently announced global expansion of its vision picking pilot program, to include the M300 series, across the United States Europe and England."

This is about Vuzix.




wareable.com -- more at the source.

So where to next? Are smartglasses now destined to be the big wearable event of 2017? Nobody out there knows better than Vuzix, and nobody within Vuzix knows better than CEO Paul Travers. Since 1997 (it was named Icuiti for the first ten years), Vuzix has been quietly working on the smartglasses revolution with a focus on enterprise - a low hanging fruit, Paul admits - building devices for helping professionals in warehouse logistics, healthcare, quality assurance, and even the military field. 

Almost all of them have been fashionably questionable, which is fine when nobody else sees them, but it's also given Vuzix the time to build slowly towards the consumer.

At CES 2017 it will be demoing its new pair of specs, the Blade 3000. This marks a midway point between business and the everyday user - what Paul calls the "prosumer" - for consumer-facing professionals; doctors, dentists, secretaries etc. Using Vuzix's waveguide technology they'll provide a digital display onto the lenses, providing anything from GPS navigation data to patient information, to Skype video calls and HD movies.

Vuzix Glasses -- Microdisplay

People who know me, know that I say "I don't know" a lot.

This is an "I don't know" post. Something cool MAY be Microvision's near-eye display in action, might not be. I don't know.

There are a couple of things I DO know. 

First, this is just released by Vuzix.

Second, Vuzix HAD a partnership kind of relationship with Intel, and now doesn't have a partnership relationship with Intel. I have no idea why. There are a number of theories being batted around among the folks I talk to about this -- some of the theories if true, would be meaningfully positive for Microvision, some meaningfully negative, a few neutral. As I have no idea which theory if any of them are close to reality, I'm not going to post any. 

Third.. Vuzix DOES use Microvision's displays, but doesn't exclusively use Microvision's displays. (as far as we know.) The proof of this is in the 10K filing, which is linked to below.


From Street Insider




From Vuzix 10K

We currently purchase almost all of the microdisplays used in our products from Kopin and Microvision. Our relationship with these microdisplay suppliers is generally on a purchase order basis and neither firm has a contractual obligation to provide adequate supply or acceptable pricing to us on a long-term basis. We procure a small percentage of our microdisplays from other sources such as Syndiant and Texas Instruments. While we do not manufacture our components, we own the tooling that is used to make our custom components with the exception of certain authentication chips and connectors that may be required to support industry standard device connectivity. We believe that we are not dependent on our relationships with any supplier other than Kopin or Microvision. Kopin before we sold the defense divisions had also been a significant customer of our night vision display electronics modules and owns just under 3% of our common stock. Some of our accessory products are sourced from third parties as finished goods. We typically have them print our Vuzix brand name on these products of they are co-branded. Such third party products represented less than 5% of our sales in 2015.

Kopin's Website

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons. One of their favorites. Still focused on useful things (not a gaming device) Still a poor field of view. 

Most of the efforts that companies like this are making are dedicated to interface, software, sensors, etc. They'll be able to add a much better display later.

Wearable --More at the source -- favorites from the wearable tech show)

Vuzix

We've talked about Vuzix before, but the company was at WTS to show off its latest model, the M300. The new glasses are built to be open to more industrial, medical, retail and business uses, also offering a more ergonomic design. Even if they're only targeting enterprise for now, we think Vuzix is offering a lot of promise for this niche category right now. It's not a surprise that Vuzix reminds us so much of Google Glass, and in fact the company revealed Google approached it during the early stages of Google Glass to propose a partnership - but it didn't happen in the end.

Vuzix tells us it's sold 10,000 units so far, with its biggest use case currently engineers. It's interesting to see how Vuzix has endured - 15 years in the business - where other similar products have failed, and although it's still targeting the workplace, there's no doubt more consumer-facing products can learn a thing or two from Vuzix.

Here's where Microvision can shine -- the NOMAD far exceeds this field of view. (If this description is correct, it seems to me that lot of people won't be able to make use of it for text in any practical way.) List of solutions here

Vuzix M300 Spec Sheet

• Field of View (diagonal): 20 degrees, equivalent
  to 5 in. mobile device screen seen at 14 in 
  

Still available by invitation only