Source: USPTO

The transparent conical housing with a flexible display being inserted

Apple’s new patent is for a “consumer electronic product” with a flexible display that rolls up when needed, and unrolls if desired. In the patent claims, Apple says it could fit within a conical glass housing — a flattened oval — which would allow the display to be visible on any portion of the device.

In other words, your phone no longer has a front or back … just whatever side you happen to be looking at.

The device as patented includes facial recognition and user-sensing technology that determines which side is within your field of vision at any given time and selectively displays content and controls only where you can see them.

As such, it’s an interesting response to Google’s backside control patent, which describes controls built into the back of your phone to allow you to flip screens, turn pages, or control music without taking up front-screen real estate. Apple has a previous patent on similar backside controls, but this is more radical.

Source: USPTO

The flexible display inside the transparent glass housing

What’s interesting to me, however, is the flexible AMOLED display that rolls up and unrolls (see image gallery below, especially the fifth image). It’d be a perfect display for a sort of iCuff — a full phone built into a product that rides on your wrist.

The concept of iWatch as a peripheral to an iPhone has never made a ton of sense to me. If I already have a phone, it is already either on my person, or close enough for easy checking. A peripheral that simply enables notifications from my phone and perhaps has a few other self-quantification features doesn’t seem to be enough to make it worthwhile.

Rather, it makes more sense, potentially, to provide the entire phone (read: portable computer with communication capabilities) in a flexible cuff format that now comes with a handy new carrying case: you.

And, of course, if you want your full screen to be available, you simply unroll the cuff and snap the screen flat.

It would certainly solve the phone-in-the-pocket problem while still keeping your hands free for whatever you need to carry or do. And it’s built-in hands-free for while you’re driving.

More images from the patent application:

Image credits: iWatch mockup by VeneStudio; Hat tip: Cult of Mac

The OLED Association says that Lee played a senior role in LG’s project to create a printed AMOLED TV. Printed products are created using a 3D printing process that essentially builds the entire product, layer by layer, simultaneously, as opposed to conventional products that are fabricated with individual components that are then fitted together.

Rumor mill, start your engines: This obviously means that Apple is now working on an actual flat-screen Apple TV.

Source: LinkedIn

James Lee

Apart from presumably well-medicated analysts who have been predicting Apple’s imminent launch of an Apple TV for years now, we’ve seen no real sign of an actual hang-it-on-your-wall Apple living-room device. But it’s worth noting that Apple builds a lot of devices with a lot of screens — tens of millions of iPads, iPhones, laptops, iMacs, and monitors — all of which could benefit from improved screen technology.

Interestingly, Panasonic recently unveiled a ultrahigh-def 4K AMOLEd TV that was printed, not conventionally fabricated, at CES in Las Vegas.

AMOLED stands for Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode, and it is an advanced version of OLED with higher screen refresh rates, lower power consumption, and higher contrast ratios. 4K televisions have four times the resolution of standard high-def TVs, with a resolution of 3,840 pixels by 2,160 pixels. Apple’s existing 15-inch retina MacBook Pros have a resolution of 2,880-by-1,800 pixels.

I’ve contacted Apple PR, but the company has not yet responded.

photo credit: jcoterhals via photopin cc, Hat tip: C|Net

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Samsung owns 99 percent of the world’s OLED market. This is one reason why, the company claims, Korean rival LG has been hiring its engineers and stealing its intellectual property.

So Samsung is suing LG in a Seoul court.

It might appear to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, considering Samsung’s recent loss in the iPhone patent case. However, this is a very different scenario.

According to the complaint, LG has been systematically recruiting key Samsung engineers, who are breaking noncompete employment contracts by signing on. As a Korean news agency states, Samsung claims that ”LG Display has consistently acquired our OLED technologies and other business secrets by inducing our researchers to transfer.”

Eleven people were indicted for stealing or improperly sharing Samsung’s corporate secrets in July, including a key engineer in Samsung’s development of AMOLED technology (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode).

With sales of OLED and AMOLED displays predicted to hit $44 billion in 2016, the battle is really about the future and who will own the bulk of that market. If Samsung can maintain its technology lead, it can effectively shut competitors — including LG — out of that business.

Samsung is demanding a billion won for each case of infringement, which is equivalent to about $900,000 U.S.

photo credit: khrawlings via photo pin cc

Here’s a rare tech story from the police blotter: Eleven suspects have been arrested in connection to AMOLED technology allegedly stolen from Samsung and sold to one of its competitors in the TV manufacturing space.

Sources for the Suwon desk of South Korean news agency Yonhap News stated the stolen tech revolves around next-generation flat screen displays for televisions and was leaked from Samsung’s mobile display division to a rival firm.

The arrested persons include Samsung’s and/or its rivals researchers and employees. One of the arrested former Samsung employees was paid the equivalent of $168,544 for information about Samsung’s AMOLED display technology and subsequently accepted a position at the competitor in question. Police told Yonhap reporters that this suspect then attempted to leak the same information to another manufacturer in China upon becoming disgruntled with his new employer.

The specific technology suspected of having been leaked is one that is quite unique to Samsung’s AMOLED displays. Called small mask scanning (SMS), this technology is a replacement for fine metal masking (FMM), a simple but inefficient method used for one of the many steps in making an OLED panel. (For a full run-down of how OLED displays are made, check out this highly informative and detailed page.)

The point is, Samsung’s signature AMOLED process (including the SMS technology) was supposed to make it possible for that company to produce larger and larger AMOLED displays, all without having to cut the glass substrate. The company was set to debut a 65″ AMOLED TV this year — yep, that’s 10 inches larger than the monster displays they were showing off at CES this year. But talk around the SMS method has been fraught with rumors; apparently, it was hot enough to make Samsung employees willing to share it — and to make competitors want to pay for it.

As the world waits for Korean police to release more details, we at VentureBeat can’t help but ask, who was the rival company? LG has been working on a lot of the same problems with large LED screens; could it be that someone at that company felt like taking an unscrupulous research shortcut?

We’ll keep you posted as news continues to break in this case.

Image courtesy of Hasloo Group Production Studio, Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Samsung’s Galaxy S selling spree continues, as the company announces it has shipped 3 million of the Android phones to the US since they first went on sale in July, Reuters reports.

The company’s US numbers are a significant portion of its total 7 million Galaxy S phones shipped worldwide. Sales are moving so briskly that the company wishes it had more supply, according to Samsung chief marketing officer Paul Golden. Supply shortages of the company’s 4-inch AMOLED display are believed to be the current bottleneck cause. Golden says the company is working on ramping up its screen production.

Samsung is definitely going to need to produce more screens if it expects to reach its projected sales of 10 million phones by the end of the year.

The company is also rolling out even more phones that use the AMOLED screens. Last night, Samsung unveiled its Continuum phone for Verizon — which is most notable for the dedicated ticker display below its main screen. Previous glimpses at the phone led us to believe it had two separate screens, but Samsung revealed that the Continuum sports the same 4-inch display as the rest of the Galaxy S family. The display’s top 3.4 inches are dedicated to the main phone screen, while the bottom 1.6 inches offer ticker updates for stocks, texts and the like.

It’s certainly a creative use of screen space, but it’s unclear if consumers will want to pay the same price as the rest of the Galaxy S family for less usable screen area. The Continuum will be available on Verizon November 11th for $200 with a two-year contract (and after a $100 mail-in rebate). Internally it sports the same hardware as the rest of the Galaxy S clan, including a 1-gigahertz Hummingbird processor, 5 megapixel camera, and Android 2.1. Hopefully, Samsung will offer an update to the more recent Android 2.2 release soon.