******** NEW 10 PART ADOT INFORMATION SERIES......PART 4********
[ NOTE: Please read all the
information in the PART 1
header preceding THE COMPANY
found in message # 852 of
this thread ]
PART 4...MARKETING: DIRECT DISPLAY APPLICATIONS . OPTICAL COMPUTING
DIRECT DISPLAY APPLICATIONS
Outside advertising/billboards:
The following is taken from Advanced Optics Electronics, Inc.'s (ADOT) Offering Circular of January 21, 1997 (OC)
" The outdoor advertising market reached more than $1.8 billion in 1992 with three industry leaders , Patrick Media Group(PMG) ,Gannett Outdoor and 3M National Advertising accounting for almost 40% of the revenue. Movements in the industry suggest that the total number "faces" will be stable or reduced while increased focus will be on prime locations and diversifying its customer base. Recent innovations include various types of mobile faces and electronic systems that can be changed rapidly and therefore have time sold on them , similar to TV and radio advertising formats."
(OC)" The current cost and relatively low quality of electronic billboards has limited their application in this industry to relatively few locations. ADOT's management has already discussed the possibility of building high-quality solid state electronic billboards for less than $1 million per unit with management at Gannett. Gannett's management estimated that at the price as much as 10% of their outdoor billboards might eventually be converted. Gannett currently owns over 35,000 out door billboards and PMG has more than 80,000.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The number of large players in the outdoor advertising industry has been reduced significantly in the last 18 months buy mergers. Both
Gannett Outdoor AND 3M National Advertising mentioned in this ADOT OC were bought and merged with Outdoor Systems, Inc. which looks to be the largest in the country now. Patrick Media Group was recently acquired by Eller Media Co.
Outdoor Systems,Inc (OSI) NYSE seems to be the most likely candidate to be working with ADOT at the present time.
(OC) " A proposal is being developed that outlines the development of a 14'X 48' solid state display using ADOT's pixels of approximately 1/4 to 1/2 inch which would yield a color image of extremely high resolution and CAPABLE OF FULL MOTION GRAPHICS (my caps). Early discussions with Gannett and other potential customers have begun regarding various plans of financial support, pricing and eventual market roll out strategies."
Flat Screen Displays:
(OC) " The flat-panel display market is currently greater than $4 billion and estimated to reach $9.3 billion by 1996 (Design News 8/5/91) The greatest potential applications are seen in both the LAPTOP COMPUTER (my caps) market ($2.8 billion in 1996) and the HDTV flat screen ($3.8 billion in 1996). The drivers in both markets will continue to be quality and cost with $200./unit being the estimated high volume threshold in the laptop market and $500.-$700. in HDTV."
"Currently the largest players are Toshiba,Sharp, Hitatchi, Litton Canada, and Xerox. The Japanese companies in particular have spent several billion dollars trying (in vain so far) to improve both the quality and manufacturing yields of their products."
" Small companies like DIS , Photonics and Photon Synamics are surviving by addressing the military market, they recently received several contracts from the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DAPRA), NASA and the National Institute for the Sciences (NIST) worth over $15 million to develop the first flat panel color plasma and AM-LCD displays."
" MRS Technology also recently received another DAPRA contract for $12.5 million to develop flat panel substrates, as part of that agency's $75 million High Definition Program (Electronic News 6/1/92)."
" The major advantages of ADOT based SLM in flat panel displays would be:
..(1) computer quality contrast ration (Greater than 256:1)
..(2) much greater brightness ( more than 10,000 lumens)
..(3) sub-microsecond switching time current military display suppliers have stated that they would be willing to pay as much as $500. per square inch for displays of this or lesser quality today."
High quality presentation market:
(OC) "Companies such as IN-FOCUS ($49.5 million 1991 sales) BARCO ($45 million), and AMPRO 9Ampro's Espirit line has grown from $2 million to almost $20 million in 2 yrs.) have been aggressively selling to the high-presentation hardware market using primarily LCD panels (1992 market projected at $321 million to grow to $543 million by 1995). Computer Reseller News 3/2/91). These units sell for between $3,000 and $10,000 and currently provide a limited resolution 60-70 inch image in a relatively mobile package supporting many varied mobile presentation applications. Again these companies and their competitors have approached the theoretical limits of what their systems can offer in terms of display quality/size and therefore market differentiation."
" ADOT's management has already met and/or discussed the potential of our new technology with officials in several of these companies and potential joint efforts are in the process of being developed."
Commercial movie theaters:
(OC) " With greater than 24,000 theaters in the U.S. alone, the substantial advantages of the "electronic theater" would offset the initial cost of converting from 35mm to electronic video systems. Electronic conversion and distribution systems already exist for all other aspects of the movie industry."
OPTICAL COMPUTING
High-density spatial light modulators (SLM):
(OC) "Due to the rapidly growing interest in optics as potentially the next great source of technical innovations, new projects and programs are being developed constantly. In early 1992, a new Center for Optical Science and Engineering was established at Georgia Institute of Technology involving over 70 faculty members and a minimum annual budget of more than $6 million. A company called Photonex was formed at about the same time to develop optical processors with a $1 million investment from a Norwegian investment group called Tekno-invest. These are the only two of the more than 250 companies and universities researching and developing optical computing concepts, applications and components, with key development centers in Tokyo, Munich, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, California and New Mexico."
" Potential applications include all the highly data-intensive, real time requirements functions that are impractical today in that only super-computers are capable of providing the necessary speed and data volumes. Current technical leaders consist of Liquid Crystal TV's (tandy and U.S. Army), Deformable Mirrors (TI), Liquid Chrystal Light Valves (Hughes) and symmetric self-electro-optical effective devices (AT&T). There also exist a number of Technical Specialists such as Meadoelark Optics and Corning supporting the growing need for critical optical components."
" Two of the most advanced current applications are a 256X256 Fouier correlator being used to explore optical computing's potential in the lab and a vector matrix multiplier (VMM) developed by Photonex and used to speed up the parallel processing of complex mathematics by as much as a million times. Practical examples would include real-time optical pattern recognition systems needed to design machines that can sense and react immediately to irregular patterns; as in automated manufacturing quality systems.High volume date signal conversions needed in many of today's high-speed, high volume communications systems as well as adaptive wave front estimation and compensation would be others."
"ADOT's SEVERAL THOUSAND FOLD IMPROVEMENT (my caps) in the key optical parameters of contrast, speed and brightness (with minimal lead through) promises to solve several of optical computing's most difficult problems."
" Management believes that within 6-9 months ADOT's based SLM of density 1028X1028 would be ready to installation. One potential customer was quoted as stating that such a device could be worth up to $500,000 in current markets. Matrices of 2048X2048 would not take much longer to develop and would prioritized based on feedback from ADOT's initial customers."
" Because the field of optical computing is still very much in the developmental stage, the largest initial market is expected to be those companies and universities involved in this research. ADOT plans to offer its first high-density arrays to these customers at approximately $25,000 per copy and expects sales of 200-300 units within the NEXT TWO YEARS (my caps). These researchers would then become the source for the next tier of optical computing products which would be based on ADOT's initial SLMs. By staying close to these key customers, the Company could stay at the forefront of optical computing developments and be one of the industry's primary system resources."
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