Apple renews Liquidmetal exclusivity license into 2016

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 29
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    ksec wrote: »
    Apple needs to work out a simple, efficient and cheap way to manufacture iPhone using Liquid Metal

    why? why does apple "need" to do this? how are they failing now?
  • Reply 22 of 29
    am8449am8449 Posts: 392member

    I like what this says about Apple.

     

    That they're not rushing to implement something that's not ready yet. And that they are continuing to test Liquidmetal until it is.

  • Reply 23 of 29
    ipenipen Posts: 410member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by iZENstein View Post



    I'm waiting on 20,000 shares of LQMT to pop up. It would be a nice jackpot.

     

    Over 16% pop up today.  Nice jackpot for you in 1 day.

  • Reply 24 of 29
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    The world's first "liquidmetal" phone? This came out of no where.
    http://www.turingphone.com/

    EDIT: Available for pre-order at the end of the month. Figured it was farther out.
  • Reply 25 of 29
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    ipen wrote: »
    Over 16% pop up today.  Nice jackpot for you in 1 day.

    What's more amazing is the massive drop of their stock since 2002. Wow.
  • Reply 26 of 29
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    ipen wrote: »
    Over 16% pop up today.  Nice jackpot for you in 1 day.

    What's more amazing is the massive drop of their stock since 2002. Wow.

    They've made net losses almost every year for 13 years and when they do make money, it's in the hundreds of thousands:

    http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/lqmt/sec-filings

    Valuing it at over $1b was a bit premature. They only have a handful of customers and 23 employees. $210m cumulative deficit, covered by investors. There was an article from last year suggesting they'd need to file for bankruptcy within a couple of quarters:

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/2069683-liquidmetal-technologies-and-apples-relationship-why-it-matters

    They have about $10m in assets so it can hold out another year or two at least. With just 23 employees, it can probably survive for a while if they scale down the operation and just hold the IP.

    The inventor has said Apple would be able to use it on a large scale within 3-5 years (from 2012) with an investment of $300-500m:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/liquidmetal-inventor-atakan-peker-apple-will-use-it-in-a-breakthrough-product-2012-5

    There doesn't seem to be any indications of that kind of investment in the company itself but Apple would most likely set up their own manufacturing separate from the liquid metal company and use the license. This won't increase liquid metal technologies' revenue because Apple paid a one-off $20m fee for unlimited use.

    Resistance to dents and scratching would be great for an iPhone. Sapphire is more scratch-resistant too:

    1000

    Liquid metal back and sapphire front would make a pretty robust device and it offers more freedom to expand the fingerprint sensor but they have to be able to scale the manufacturing for both materials and be able to get the right coloring for the metal.

    It would make sense for the iPhone 7 because they'll probably do a major design change. They could go back to using the glass (or sapphire) top/bottom on the back but use their metal oxide process to put the metallic appearance under the transparent layer so it would look more like the following, which is just a photo of the iPhone 5s where the lighting makes the bands look similar to the metal but no thick seam like the iPhone 6:

    1000

    That process required matching the glass plates to the metal for tolerance but they could probably blend the two parts together with liquid metal.
  • Reply 27 of 29
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by NolaMacGuy View Post

     
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ksec View Post



    Apple needs to work out a simple, efficient and cheap way to manufacture iPhone using Liquid Metal




    why? why does apple "need" to do this? how are they failing now?

     

    An iPhone made out of Liquid Metal would bury the competition. And that's just now including the net chatter it would produce.

     

    It's not like a "need" for Apple to do this, but since Samsung is closing the parity gap by more copying of iPhone design and features, a jump to Liquid Metal by Apple would leave Samsung (and every else) coughing in the dust.

  • Reply 28 of 29
    singularitysingularity Posts: 1,328member
    An iPhone made out of Liquid Metal would bury the competition. And that's just now including the net chatter it would produce.

    It's not like a "need" for Apple to do this, but since Samsung is closing the parity gap by more copying of iPhone design and features, a jump to Liquid Metal by Apple would leave Samsung (and every else) coughing in the dust.
    Why use liquid metal to bury the competition and add significant cost when your are all ready burying them without using it?
  • Reply 29 of 29
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Why use liquid metal to bury the competition and add significant cost when your are all ready burying them without using it?

    True. Until any viable competition arises offering significantly better products (at similar or better price points) there is no reason for Apple to over-engineer their offerings.
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