I think your posts give us some relief from the recent depressed state of semi stocks. Thanks!
I have looked at XYBR and one of their competitors (can't remember the symbol right off) which have soared recently, kept looking but was afraid to jump on because of the relative high valuations. XYBR went up and down between around 12 to around 7 yesterday. I tried to short it at around 11 but my broker had no shares available.
I was involved with a company here in Seattle named Virtual I/O that made an early stab at head mounted display systems or what they called I-Glasses. The company had a some success selling their higher end product to professional markets but went bust when they tried to aggressively target the consumer market with a $400 device. The real problem was that the display technology just wasn't able to deliver high resolution at low cost. You could get high resolution at high cost and low resolution at low cost but too little in between. The part of it I was involved in (working with a tech supplier) was in what's called the "head tracker" - a sensor assembly that fits on the head assembly and, appropriately enough, tracts the movement of your head as you move through virtual space. It used magneto resistive sensor ICs to measure position relative to earth's magnetic flux lines. Since the earth's magnetic field doesn't change, you get a reliable reference anywhere you are, software synched to the plane of the screen and a gravitational level sensor. Maybe not as accurate an approach as triangulation using fixed point wireless reference transmitters, but practical from a cost standpoint and able to be automatically set-up, and superior to accelerometer only approaches which are compute intensive and prone to computational drift. I'm sure this is more than you ever wanted to know about this.
Several companies have been working on new and optimized approaches to building small, very high-resolution display ICs and systems. This ranges from organic polymer technology to integrating a complete driver and display LCD system on an IC substrate. I'm not an expert on which technology has the greatest likelihood of success. Probably a few will have success in specific markets. The PC monitor or portable LCD display is one of the stumbling blocks to bringing down total system costs and improving the flat screen display metaphor. One advantage of head mounted displays is that it can be optically made to appear as a very large (immersive) wrap-around screen. Binocular systems can also produce a much truer 3-D effect.
But the ultimate driver in producing a head mounted display system is that once the technology and tooling are paid for, the materials and resources needed to produce them are much less than for CRTs or large format LCD. If you project that out 10-15 years, they are likely to win out in cost.
The advantages for XYBR and other head-mounted display and wearable computer systems companies at this point in time is for training, industrial, military, and other applications where the availability of installation, maintenance, and logistics information is critical or offers cost savings.
When companies such as Three Five Systems and others come through with low cost, high resolution display technology, and the products move down the cost/unit experience curve, the market should open up dramatically toward consumer applications.
Other things, such as inexpensive voice command software and high powered but low cost and low power consumption uPs (Winchip II!), dovetail this capability. This may be one hot area for development of a specialized SOC uP that integrated large on-chip memory and custom display driver circuits.
This industry will evolve dramatically over the next 5 and ten years but still has lots of growing pains to go through before it is likely to be a real success with mass markets. The commercial/industrial/military markets are just starting to become more aware that wearable computers can provide bankable advantages for training, documentation and complex assembly and maintenance operations.
If you want to ride these tigers, be prepared for it to be a roller-coaster ride! |
