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:
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:
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:
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:
That process required matching the glass plates to the metal for tolerance but they could probably blend the two parts together with liquid metal.
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.
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?
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.
Comments
why? why does apple "need" to do this? how are they failing now?
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.
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.
http://www.turingphone.com/
EDIT: Available for pre-order at the end of the month. Figured it was farther out.
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:
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:
That process required matching the glass plates to the metal for tolerance but they could probably blend the two parts together with liquid metal.
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.
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.