 here the SID display week here with a query ink and who are you my name is Frank Christians I'm the CEO of clearing displays so here we're looking at actually you won the best in show the SID right that was amazing we won the best in show award for our technology which is truly groundbreaking it's a reflective display technology it's the first reflective display technology they can show video and color so right now we are for example reading some text and there's also video what we show here is something that's historic achievement it's it's an e-reader with text but at the same time we can show animation in this in the same screen that has never been done before and it's a great breakthrough for us as a company that's why we're exhibiting this year and here we should be looking at video video basically a color we're looking at 33 frames per second video with color again a breakthrough never been done before and this is but this is the first generation and so this is just a demo these are just prototypes it goes into trial manufacturing in June July and into volume manufacturing by the end of this year so let's walk around here you have another demo right here this one is fast fast animation this is a demo that shows how fast our displays work this is not possible with a traditional e-reader where you take a few milliseconds to so just just just to have an idea so right now if you'd have only text it's by stable and we have different platforms we have a by stable platform and we have a video platform the company is focused at this moment mainly on the video platform because that's where we see most of the traction with customers we actually have two customers who have invested in the company and one customer has prepaid for a product we need to deliver next year and that customer wants the video platform so the by stable platform is not going commercial yet next year is this the video platform right now this is the video platform so as you can see the video platform can be used to make an e-reader as well so when you do e-reader and the video platform how's the battery life the battery life is excellent compared to LCD there are great power savings because we don't use a backlight how much better a lot better 80 to 90 percent 80 to 90 yes the the the energy required to produce this image is very very minimal so the images generated by very small particles that have to move only half a micron to change a pixel and that requires very little energy so and over here this is another photo maybe I can ask can we talk about the technology works right we have we have an amazing team in in clearing so to make this all possible we have a small company of only 25 people but these people are very exceptional technical experts in their field so I want to hand over to Scott Ferguson our VP of engineering to explain the technology all right so who are you I'm Scott Ferguson I'm responsible for engineering for clearing and and here you're showing how the technology is working yeah exactly let me in fact let me back it up I can pause it so the basic technology is based on using total internal reflection to generate our bright state so what we do is we get all of our white reflection comes from the top plane of our display so is a liquid crystals no we use a electrophoretic ink proprietary ink that we co-develop with Merck so we have a single black particle that's charged and we keep the particle away from the reflector we get full reflection so we can get a very bright state from our top frame and then when we reverse the polarity our charged particles are pressed up against the lenses and does full of fully absorbs the light so we can move these particles very quickly and that's what allows us to do video rate so it's micro scale lenses yeah the scale of the lens is very small much smaller than the pixel itself and the particle themselves are also is that the innovation the small lenses everything I mean but that's nobody has done this kind of lenses before it's a very unique technology and we have a very strong patent portfolio around it so the ability to reflect that light that is key to our technology it's core of our technology so it's the optical design it's the materials it's how we manufacture it coupled with that proprietary ink that we work with Merck on that's that's the core of our technology is it possible to have your video platform and the bistable platform between one or it has to be one or the other you have to make a choice if you want to buy stable platform then you basically have to sacrifice the capability to to have video but how is the performance of the bistable platform is just for text mostly or it's meant for it's meant for text and for electronic shelf labels so that that's the huge market this does shelf labels there's digital signage that's of course a huge market but the market for video is a lot bigger even so our first target market is educational e-readers which is a huge market and educational e-readers require video these days they require access to the internet and there is no technology in the market today that can meet that that customer needs well if we would go into electronic shelf labels with bistable then there are other supplies in that market so we actually have a few unique market niches where we we don't have any competition so we have huge customer attraction so as a company that's why we decide to focus on these markets so there's this market here all the all the kids need to have a reflective and not a backlight devices that damage the eyes right they need to have something pleasure pleasurable to read whole books on yet so there is a growing concern with everybody who has young children my children spent three four hours a day on their iPads and now their school wants to digitize as well so these children are going to be spending 12 hours a day staring at a backlit or a missive display and there was a concern that that may not be ideal as a reading experience and here the reading experience if you can grab the that one so the reading experience here yeah it's the same as reading a book and people have been like paper it's like paper so people have been reading paper for thousands of years this is what we bring back to the educational market it's a digital device that reads like paper but i can also do video that can also do video how many how how much how many colors are you going to be able to have when you do mass production is that about a color filter yes we use color filters we think that initial products will have about four thousand ninety six colors but we don't really have a technical limit it's something that needs to be developed so you need gray scale for that and we have done a proof of concept for four thousand ninety four thousand ninety six colors and that should be sufficient for the markets that we address initially all right but it cannot have the full color saturation of like the high-end ixo LCD displays or something no that's also not the target so one typical trap that we need to want people for is don't compare us to an LCD display or an OLED display we will never be a bright shiny object our ambition in life is to be as good as printed paper we want to be as good as printed paper so if you look at the at the the printing in the background of the boot here that is our performance objective and how how do you compare with e-ink how's how are your whites and your blacks and so our whites are much better we achieved today 83 percent reflection on the white and that is almost double what e-ink can deliver today but that doesn't really matter a better way that doesn't really matter for for e-ink they have certain markets where their technology is ideal we are actually targeting different markets than e-ink also our contrast is is also better so and it's because we have this this very high brightness that we can create a color a color product so high contrast because of because of the technology it's it's entirely different technology so we get to compare it a lot with e-ink which is actually not correct we're much more an lcd type of technology than a an e-ink type of technology so our architecture is very similar to lcd the other really big benefit of using our technology is that you can you can manufacture it in existing lcd manufacturing environments so it's not some new printers or something special new no no so e-ink is a very proprietary it's a it's a display in its own class we are much more like an extension of the lcd industry how much needs to be tweaked on a lcd fab to make your a lot of processes a few things or no the actually we simplify the the stack compared to lcd we have no polarizer we have no backlight unit and the manufacturing environment needs to change maybe like 10 15 percent to adapt it to what we what we need in a factory so 10 15 percent all right and uh so how soon are we seeing all this is happening soon and we're shipping in january 2018 yes so very soon there's going to be some products out there yes there so there will be demonstration panels and evaluation kits in in the third quarter of this year and then in the fourth quarter of this year we're moving from a trial factory to the volume factory and then buy stable comes later your price label buy stable will come later at the moment we're very much focused on delivering to customer orders and buy stable is will require additional resources which is always a challenge for a startup company you need something to ship and the wearables is also a target market the wearable you can have small displays the wearables is our second target market so actually our trial manufacturing in june july of this year is also inclusive of one wearable products there is a customer that came up with a specification that we can very well meet and so we're going to have a first wearable product as well next year and here the text that you have right here is it talk it talks about e-school books and mobile phones so how about mobile phones with this it's going to have huge battery life can you target that you could use our technology in a smartphone and extend the battery life it would be very beneficial in an environment where the smartphone is used outdoor there we would completely outperform LCD or OLED but it's not focus of our company at the moment it's it's a different environment like I told you there's a couple of markets where we actually don't have competition if we would go into smartphones people are very happy with their OLED and their LCD displays and so it's not really a challenge that I wish to I think it'd be nice to have a month's battery life on the phone you know I think that'd be great yes that should be a target also I think yes we can extend the battery life but the power consumption on a smartphone is not just the display it's also the wireless communication so I'm not sure we can give you a month battery life can you do front light we can do front light yeah very easily a very interesting thing with a front light is a front light uses a lot less power than a back light to begin with because it's totally efficient compared to a back light but also compared to for example e-ink we have inherent advantages in deploying a front light so the optical gain in our front layer is such that we need very little power in a front light all right so very little power in the front light and it's just regular front light kind of technology it just come in front it's regular technology optimized for our display of course you could have that for the smartphone so it works indoors automatically turn on the front light yes yes but you would still have to compete with LCD and OLED and I prefer to go into markets where we have a little or no competition as a startup you have to choose your battles wisely so here is the first time you show this display has been the response here the SID display week and it's all you want best in show but it's beyond all expectations it's good yes we've had lots of nice visitors all our competitors have been here and clients are getting excited very excited yeah we've been extremely busy and we have booked lots of follow-up meetings in our office in three month california where we can show more of the technology than what we show here we can show flexible displays we can show front lights so it works with flexible yes so you'll be in the plastic based uh flexible maybe lower cost devices yes so we're totally ready for a flexible we've done first proof of concept um flexible for us is not a challenge flexible uh requires a flexible backplane we're not a backplane technology we're from plane technology we have shown that we can work with at least two uh suppliers of backplanes