7-26: Apple iPhone sales are poised to hit the 1 billion mark; The transistor could stop shrinking in just 5 years; Chinese display makers are diverting investments away from LCD production and into flexible OLED production; etc.
Apple iPhone sales are poised to hit the 1 billion mark; The transistor could stop shrinking in just 5 years; Chinese display makers are diverting investments away from LCD production and into flexible OLED production; Verizon has come out as the winner of the Yahoo! sweepstakes; Facebook indicates within 5-10 years to have an AR headset; etc.
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Chipset |
| After more than 50 years of miniaturization, the transistor could stop shrinking in just 5 years. That is the prediction of the 2015 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, which was officially released earlier this month. After 2021, the report forecasts, it will no longer be economically desirable for companies to continue to shrink the dimensions of transistors in microprocessors. (IEEE Spectrum, Semiconductors, Popular Mechanics, Motherboard, CN Beta)
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Touch Display |
| Chinese display makers are diverting investments away from LCD production and into flexible OLED production. BOE, CSOT, TianMa and Visionox – all bringing forward flexible OLED plans. (ET News, press, OLED-Info, TechNews)
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Battery |
| BeCool, the Florida-based startup behind the idea, has created a Power Tech system that uses natural gas, an easily and cheaply stored form of energy that is rarely used in ACs. But the real draw, of course, is the Power Tech’s ability to create electricity. (CN Beta, Digital Trends, BeCool, Scientific American)
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Sensory |
| US sensor manufacturer Flexpoint has revealed that it is to produce virtual reality articulated hand tracking gloves on behalf of Manus VR. The partnership has already entered its first phase, with production to customise Flexpoint’s Bend Sensor technology to fit the Manus VR gloves. (NC News, CJN, eTekNix, PR Newswire)
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Smartphones |
| Verizon has come out as the winner of the Yahoo! sweepstakes. The word is that the official purchase price will be USD4.8 billion. (Phone Arena, WSJ, TechCrunch, NY Times, Re/Code, iFeng, 163) |
| It is a function of cheaper phones becoming good enough, said Abhey Lamba, a San Francisco-based analyst at Mizuho Securities, Apple has done well at the upper end, but there’s not much more growth at the upper end of the market. Apple more than doubled its Chinese revenue between 2013 and 2015 to USD59 billion. Analysts expect total revenue to decline by a further 15% in the three months through June compared with a year earlier. (CN Beta, Bloomberg, Live-Mint, TechNews)
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| Apple iPhone sales are poised to hit the 1 billion mark. The sales in the third quarter are expected to reach 40 million, with overall sales of 987 million units by the end of June. Analysts expect Apple to sell another 40 million iPhones in the present quarter. Apple generates more than two thirds of its revenue from iPhones. (CN Beta, IB Times, Financial Times)
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| Apple’s newest 6S and 6S Plus models, which start at USD650, accounted for just 65% of all U.S. sales 2Q16, according to a survey of buyers by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). In 1Q16, the two high-end phones accounted for 71% of sales. A year ago, the then-top two models, the 6 and 6 Plus, accounted for 82% of sales, CIRP said. The iPhone SE captured 16% of sales in the most recent quarter, with most of the rest going to the mid-tier iPhone 6 and 6 Plus first introduced in 2014. (Fortune, article, CN Beta, Motley Fool, Business Insider, CIRP press)
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| According to the survey of 1,004 people, conducted by Gallup Korea last week, 41% of the respondents who are aged 20-29 use Apple iPhones. In contrast, 57% of the respondents aged 50-59 use Galaxy S smartphones and 59% of those aged 60-69 use Samsung smartphones. (Korea Herald, CN Beta, Patently Apple) |
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Wearables |
| Greenlight VR has released their latest virtual reality consumer research, survey almost 1,300 U.S. consumers, ages 18-60. Among respondents, 71% agree that a brand that sponsors VR is forward-thinking and modern, while 52% would like to be associated with that brand. (VR Scout, Hypergrid Business, 199IT, Greenlight)
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| Sealand Securities has summarized 3 forms of AR: handheld, spatial display and wearables. Sealand Securities believes that AR has more mobility, thus application is wider. General consensus is that AR market size would be 4 times of VR market size by 2020. (199IT, Sealand Securities report)
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| Magic Leap CMO Brian Wallace had a one-on-one discussion with Alibaba CMO Chris Tung (Alibaba is one of Magic Leap’s major investors). Brian said that the company is working on an AR headset that is portable, lightweight, and can be worn all day, and further said that the aim is to someday replace smartphones completely. (CN Beta, The Corporate Diary, Mashable, Road to VR, Tech.qq)
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| TrendForce indicates that the revenue from Pokémon GO is forecast to top USD800 million in 2017. The game is set to become a significant contributor to the expansion of the global AR software market, which will reach USD30 billion in scale by 2020. (TrendForce[cn], TrendForce) |
| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the company is “researching AR very seriously”, but sees commercialization of the technology lagging behind where VR is today. He indicates that within the next 5-10 years, Facebook has versions of that that are maybe where Rift is today, for AR. (CN Beta, Road to VR, The Verge) |
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Internet of Things |
| McKinsey has conducted a detailed analysis of 2,000-plus work activities for more than 800 occupations. Considerations such as these have led to an observed tendency for higher rates of automation for activities common in some middle-skill jobs—for example, in data collection and data processing. As automation advances in capability, jobs involving higher skills will probably be automated at increasingly high rates. (CN Beta, McKinsey, article, CN Beta, 199IT)
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| All of Ford 2017 SUVs, light trucks, cars and electric vehicles will be kitted out with SYNC 3. The addition of Ford’s voice-activated communications and entertainment system means that every single vehicle from its 2017 will feature support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in the US. (CN Beta, Beta News, Auto Evolution)
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