The original investing premise for Microvision: Everyone wants a smaller device and a bigger screen

STILL HOLDS TRUE.

Just add some LiDAR into the mix.

The video (I'm about 4 minutes in so far, is a great explanation of AR, and how MicroVision can create more screen real estate.)

AUGMENTED reality Near Eye Displays are worth at least what LiDAR will be worth.

I think a LOT more. 

We are likely in my opinion to get more value in the near term from LiDAR.

What's it worth? 

My recent price target was Minimum of LAZR X 2 Market cap. 

I stand by all my valuation estimates still and I'm happily holding.

APPLE, GOOGLE, AMAZON & MICROSOFT are ALL WORKING ON AUGMENTED REALITY AND SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES....

 Four Companies are all working on two things as "the next big things" Augmented Reality and Self driving vehicles.

Combined they are worth 6.921 Trillion
Together they have 340 billion in cash

If they have a bidding competition for key technology that will give them an edge against the others, how much would they be willing to pay? 

Is 20 Billion too much? (That's about $130/share)

To simplify even further...

 Four Companies are all working on two things as "the next big things" Augmented Reality and Self driving vehicles.

Combined they are worth 6.921 Trillion
Together they have 340 billion in cash

If they have a bidding competition for key technology that will give them an edge against the others, how much would they be willing to pay? is 20 Billion too much?

Race to Replace Smart Phones

Got the heads up on this from a couple of different sources last night and this morning.

This is where we are.

Given that Microsoft is shipping... it will be happening sooner than CNBC thinks.

CNBC

Fox News

The video is from Fox news.... I've had trouble getting it to play.

****

****

Most of the biggest names in Big Tech are racing to create smart glasses that we wear everywhere and that may replace our phones.

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Snap, Facebook Apple, Magic Leap and others are all working on some form of smart glasses or headset that will change how we view the world around us. Instead of pulling a phone out of our pockets to talk to people or interact with apps, we may do these things simply by speaking to, and looking through, a set of glasses.

There’s a race to be the first to make a set of glasses that everyone will wear, which means they have to be fashionable and sleek enough to wear all day and everywhere you go. Advocates of the technology hope that you’ll one day be able to replace every screen in your life with just one pair of smart glasses.

Conference Presentation....

MicroVision is Naming Names.  

MVIS Presentation

This is nearly as good in my mind as an out and out announcement.(IMHO)

• Amazon
• Google
• Facebook

Did NOT mention who is the BB partner (or what it is.... or did they?)

Did NOT mention who is the display only partner (or did they?)

Love this slide:

Links to two specific videos...  Check out the listing at WPG Holdings.... (BELOW)






Facebook F8 Announcement

"Facebook Announces Spaces, VR Hangout App, For Oculus Rift F8 Conference"

I think very interesting the missing "Portal Speaker."


***********
WPG Holdings Projection Smart Speaker Solution. (WPG Holdings is a distributor if you haven't already been following along. MicroVision is in very good company there.)

This engine, (the PSE-0403st) is a version of the INTERACTIVE engine -- not the Display only version. (See MicroVision Displayground for write up.)

Something for the windfall

I'm going to guess there's some LiDAR needed here.... but this could also be a cool way to spend your windfall.

MS Downgrades HIMX, The Street Acknowledges Microvision - Updated

It's been my experience (whether right or not I'm not sure) that The Street's articles can be difficult to re-locate or disappear. So, I've pulled the whole article out for posting here.

Himax was the key display provider for Google Glass, and an apparent supplier to Hololens -- although word was that Hololens was going elsewhere as well. (That was referenced here, I will update when I find the link.)

Thanks Joe

Morgan Stanley Downgrades Himax Technologies (HIMX) to Underweight Amid Growing Competition

(Updated - February 6, 2017 1:23 PM EST)

Morgan Stanley downgraded Himax Technologies (NASDAQ: HIMX) from Equalweight to Underweight with a $4 price target (down from $6), implying 24% downside.

Analyst Charlie Chan said New AR smart glasses are adopting micro display technology other than Himax's LCoS. This could jeopardize the company's leadership in this market in the long term.

Chan said while the stock is down 49% since September 1, 2016, it could de-rate further if its leading position in micro displays gets challenged.

"We now see further threats to the dominance in micro display technology of LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon)," Chan commented. "Vuzix, one of the leading vendors of AR smart glasses, won the CES Innovation Awards for its Blade 3000 and M3000, which incorporates DLP technology from Texas Instruments. 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."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Himax Technologies click here. For more ratings news on Himax Technologies click here.

Shares of Himax Technologies closed at $5.24 yesterday.


Barrons Blog

Morgan Stanley analyst Charlie Chan says Himax’s display technology is no longer cutting edge, current customer Microsoft (MSFT) is going to cut orders, and its December quarter earnings may disappoint. Chan wrote:

We now see further threats to the dominance in micro display technology of LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon). Vuzix, one of the leading vendors of AR smart glasses, won the CES Innovation Awards for its Blade 3000 and M3000, which incorporates DLP technology from Texas Instruments (see Exhibit 1). 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.

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.

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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."

Interesting stuff from NVIDIA

At one point, you just wonder if the guy slipped just a bit.

To go straight to what we think is the good stuff, start at 34:00....

Thanks Joe!


At Source

Waymo Manufacturing Partner?

Answers and poses the big questions:

Who would be the manufacturing partner? STM does a lot of automotive work. 

Magna Electronics as well, and they know Microvision. 


They're also talking about selling it to other companies.
Bloomberg


Forbes -- more at the source

Waymo this week at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit revealed that the latest generation of its hardware and software is being used on Chrysler Pacifica minivans that begin road tests this month. A total of 100 of the vans are getting radar, sensors, cameras and laser Lidar units for 360-degree, high-definition images of a vehicle's surroundings, all made by Waymo.

Having the company’s hardware engineers and software developers work together on the entire system has brought “design-driven” component cost reduction, Krafcik said. Further savings will come from high-volume production.

“We’ve scaled now so that we’re moving from units of tens to units of hundreds,” he said. “Think about the radars – we have six in the cars. We’re building 100 Pacificas now, so that’s 600 individual radar units. That’s quite a bit.”

“As you increase in an order of magnitude from tens to hundreds you’ll find cost reduction, but now we’re getting ready to scale to thousands and tens of thousands and we’re going to find there additional manufacturing cost down efficiencies,” he said. “We’ll also probably find it makes sense to work with a partner to help us manufacture these things.”

Museum Tours with project Tango

There are a few reasons that this is really interesting.

First is that a museum tour kind of application with PicoP was one example cited years ago to stockholders. That the museum's displays could be projected onto a blank wall, and someone who isn't there could experience the exhibit.

Second, this is a use of AR that is already going mainstream.

Thirdly, it's gathering data so that when AR is implemented with glasses, there will be an ecosystem for it to land in -- it will be immediately useful.



Pocket now

Lumin is “a mobile tour that uses Tango capabilities to add AR interactivity and information to further enrich your visit” at the museum, according to the official Google Blog wording. Visitors will be able to explore Ancient Egypt, Babylonia, and Mesopotamia, in a very different way; all they have to do is ask for a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro phone (powered by Tango) at the front desk, in order to take their experience to the next level.

Google promises that Tango will reach more museums around the world, and promises uses and benefits which will allow users to experience more: “see more, hear more and learn more” is the tagline, and we can’t wait to find out more about the future of Tango and AR.

Microvision Featured in EEJournal -- LIDAR

More and more is coming out about this. The price improvements claimed by Google are very interesting -- replacing a $75,000 unit by Velodyne with something costing a few hundred dollars.... 

EEJournal

Most recently, lidar has been embodied in slightly gawky units atop cars that just scream, “Something is different about this vehicle!” Using rotating mirrors, a beam can be steered 360° around the vehicle and up and down (to some extent) to map out everything that’s within range. But there’s some thought that, if we’re serious about letting the neighbors see us inside one of those, we need to improve the aesthetics.

This came up in a presentation by MicroVision at last fall’s MEMS Executive Congress. They have a MEMS mirror setup that we saw a couple of years ago as used in their pico-projector application. They use the same basic setup for heads-up displays and for lidar (which uses one extra ASIC); they adapt to the application by changing out the laser diodes and software.

Rather than rotating 360°, their MEMS mirror waves back and forth in a sinusoidal scan, controlled by a 27-Hz resonator; individual pixels are defined by turning the laser diode on and off. The faster the scan, the faster you can get an overview of what’s nearby. By slowing the scan, you get more detail. It sounds simple in principle, but they say that they have to battle jitter in the mirror and temperature effects on the laser. Control and compensation are the tough parts.

Check this out at TheVerge

Facebook Building a phone?

So, project Ara was one of those programs that it seemed PicoP would be an excellent addition to. 

Google recently shelved Ara. Apparently it's popping up over at Facebook.

Given Facebook's past of gobbling things up, and throwing a lot of resources in directions, this could get interesting.



C|Net  -- More at the Source

Ara, a Lego-like phone with modular parts, would let buyers snap on a better camera, additional batteries or any other creative hardware a developer might dream up. It was set to be the first phone entirely designed by Google, the three men claimed.

Then the Ara project was abruptly shelved.

But now, all three of those men work for Building 8 -- a secretive new division of Facebook. There, they've been joined by an impressive list of heavy hitters that reads like a who's who of the tech world: Motorola, Tesla, Apple and Amazon, in addition to that contingent of Google ex-pats.


What's Building 8?

Originally, it sounded like Building 8 was a skunkworks where Facebook could prototype a whole bunch of new technologies -- like 360-degree video cameras -- and figure out the fastest way to get them into consumers' hands, usually through partnerships.

Gigantic Pile of Tech Cash

With the right trigger, a whole lot of new tech could be invested in and sold. I think PicoP display -- and after that AR is the right trigger... 

Who's holding cash?

More at the source.

Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Oracle (ORCL) are sitting on $504 billion, or 30%, of the $1.7 trillion in cash and cash equivalents held by U.S. non-financial companies in 2015, according to an analysis released Friday by ratings agency Moody's Investors Service.  That's even more cash concentration than in previous years, as these five companies held 27% of cash in 2014 and 25% in 2013. Apple alone is holding more cash and investments than eight of the 10 entire industry sectors.

MicroVision Will make Big Bucks for Big Tech

MicroVision will make Big Bucks for Big Tech. The writing is on the wall. I've connected the big dots below. The stand-alone devices are getting their attention. The real fun will begin with attached and embedded devices. When a mobile device user can instantly (and without fiddling with focus) create a large image on any nearby surface, it will improve big tech's ability to advertise. 

To be able to do local advertising and know that they're getting more than one set of eyes on a local ad will be great for advertisers and the companies that provide it - mainly Facebook and Google. MicroVision will do very well, as they provide the medium for that service. 

Advertising is important -- why else would the mobile companies be offering streaming video free? Binge-on.

Largest companies by market Cap (Google #2, Facebook #12)

Facebook and Google get the majority of their revenue from advertising

They serve their customers -those who pay to advertise- very well. That's why they're so successful. They do this by targeting the advertising to what the people they are serving want.

They know your behavior

Facebook knows what you're doing on your computer, and they know what you're doing with your device. When they deliver advertising, they know what you've looked at, what kind of device they're delivering to, and what it's operating system is. (The majority of the mobile viewers of this blog use Apple iPad, followed by the  Xiaomi HM Note G4. I can know this because Google tracks it.)

They are dependent on the ecosystem 
They are also dependent on bandwidth, and content that draws eyes, and the medium that delivers the content - the screen. That's where MicroVision comes in. The more eyes on their content, the more they can charge for it - the better for their advertisers and for them.

Mobile as a new market greatly increased their earnings

When mobile (very recently) became a new market for them it increased their earnings power significantly

Screen Size is KEY to comfort to mobile video

Larger screen size greatly increases the appeal of mobile video -- small screen size is a barrier! -- Note that Screen resolution is the LEAST concerning factor.

: The image below is from Yahoo Advertising.

Weird Economics

There are some weird economics that occur with mobile devices too, weird may be the wrong term -- but counter-intuitive, and indirect. Many devices are sold at a severe discount, because money can be made from the content, the subscriptions and other add-ons that go with the device. We've all seen a $650 cell phone sell  for $20 or $50 with a contract. 

In 2013,  the cost to make a PS4 was $381. It was sold for $399. So, after packaging & shipping, and allowing retailers to make money, Sony made zero selling the PS4. Yet gaming is one of their most profitable endeavors.

The profit for the company (SONY does make a lot of money on gaming) comes from the secondary market, selling the games, the subscriptions and content through the device.

Free Streaming Video fits this perfectly.

Some background information below that I looked through to compose this:

Facebook Revenues (3Qtr 2015)

From Investopedia

AdWords and Search Advertising (GOOGLE)

The bulk of Google’s $66 billion revenue in 2014 came from its proprietary advertising service, Google AdWords. Of that revenue, 68 percent – or just over $45 billion – came from Google’s own websites.

Googles Investor page Financial Tables

How does Facebook Make its money? (Nice presentation, a little dated.)

Investor.Google

Q3 2015 Financial Summary

Revenues and Monetization

Revenues by source (in millions; unaudited):

	Three Months Ended September 30, 2015
Google websites	$	13,087
Google Network Members' websites		3,694
Total advertising revenues*		16,781
Other revenues		1,894
Revenues	$	18,675

How does Facebook make money?

How does Facebook make money?

From Yahoo Finance

Advertising Numbers

To say that advertising revenue is critical for Facebook is an understatement. About $11.5 billion (92 percent) of the company's $12.6 billion in 2014 revenue came from ads. Facebook increased its total revenue in 2014 by $4.59 billion, and more than 98.2 percent of that growth came from increases in advertising revenue.

Facebook points to increases in News Feed advertisements as the "most important factor" driving ad revenue growth. Average price per ad for Facebook ads also climbed by 173 percent in 2014.Rise Of Mobile

One key area of advertisement growth for Facebook is mobile ads. In December 2014, Facebook had more than 745 million average mobile daily active users. In 2014, 65 percent of Facebook's total advertising revenue came from mobile ads, up from 45 percent in 2013.

AOL ONE

AOL was purchased by Verizon

NYT - AOL ONE

AOL introduced an advertising platform Tuesday that it says will help brands more effectively spend their money to maximize the impact of ad campaigns. The platform, called ONE by AOL, is the company’s latest push into ad tech as it seeks to compete with Facebook and Google.


Advertising Test

If you'd like to figure this out, go and shop online for something that you are normally not concerned with. For example, look for an unusual hardware item. Just pretend you really need to find an unusual part for something around the house. Spend 20 minutes looking for it online, then sign back on to Facebook. You will find advertisements you see on Facebook now feature these items.

Search for an item that you would normally NEVER look for, search on Google, and Amazon. I have a couple of oddball items listed below for you to experiment with.

Search for the item and "click through" on at least two. (Click the listing.)

* digital microscope
* sushi mold
* bagpipe reeds
* chicken plucker