‘Lots of Players’ to Vie in Wearable Flexible Displays, Says Supplier

Recent research has shown that one in six Americans has bought a wearable device -- a “staggering figure” considering that the wearables market hasn’t been around that long, Senior said. But the “other side of the coin” is the corollary finding that only one in three has actually used that device in the past six months, he said. “Something’s not quite right with that picture, as far as I can see.” The “reality” of the smart watches that have debuted so far has not lived up to their “hype,” he said. “Pretty much everything we've seen has been in the same vein and hasn’t really stretched the technology very much."

Poor battery life has hindered the emergence of a truly revolutionary smart watch product, said Senior, who characterized current devices as “bulky,” “toy-like” and neither “fashionable” nor “cool.” Other “technology barriers” include the fact that flexible OLED displays are not yet widely available, he said. The indium tin oxide and its “metallic substitutes” used for making transparent conductive coatings for displays aren’t flexible, and readability in bright sunlight has been poor, he said. “When you go outside, you have absolutely no control over where the ambient light is coming from.” Another design challenge is that with smartphones and tablets “proliferating,” consumers now expect “all devices around us to work by touch,” yet touch technology has been possible only on flat-panel displays, he said.

For the wearables category to flourish, “we need touch on 3D shapes,” Senior said. “We need innovation now to bring us into this next generation, but it’s coming, and it’s going to unleash design freedom not previously thought possible. It’s going to be a fantastic next five years. I guarantee it."

A biometrics fingerprint company with roots in military security applications meanwhile is looking to gain a foothold in the smartphone security market. Jim Cantrell, CEO of IDair, told us the company’s innerID software-based module offers app developers a way to differentiate their apps using IDair’s fingerprint technology. The key to the IDair product is converting an image of a fingertip, taken with a smartphone camera, into a fingerprint image, Cantrell said.

Touch ID and other biometric technologies use the electrostatic charge from a finger, Cantrell said, and oils from the skin transfer the charge from the finger to the sensor. He called it a practical solution but said the fingerprint that’s left on the button can be duplicated with “talcum powder and a gummy bear” that can be used to lift the fingerprint off the phone. Swipe sensors, such as the one on Samsung’s Galaxy S5 smartphone, eliminate the “print lift” opportunity since the finger slides across the surface of the device, but reliability of such sensors has been an issue, Cantrell said. Swipe sensor technology has been around for years -- the IBM ThinkPad employed the technology as a security feature -- but “those sensors don’t seem to last a long time,” he said.

IDair’s approach uses the “unstructured light” from a smartphone’s camera, taking advantage of what has become a “ubiquitous hardware solution” to which IDair can attach its software, said Cantrell. “We're popping software behind the existing hardware and let the other people figure out how to make the hardware reliable and low cost -- and we'll focus on the security solution.” IDair’s goal is to “build a bigger solution” for fingerprint biometrics, but Cantrell concedes public adoption “isn’t going to happen on its own.” Consumers will need something that’s easy to use, that they feel is secure and is an infrastructure that makes sense, he said. With high-profile identify theft at an all-time high, the public is increasingly concerned about the Big Brother factor and what happens if a fingerprint is stolen, he said.