RE: Apple29 May 2023 14:39
There is no indication that Nanoco is involved and in fact it is well known that II-VI (Coherent) will supply sensors to Apple. Nanoco has no involvement with II-VI.
What is well known that Jonathan Steckel (co-founder of QD Vision) headed up Emerging Display Technology at Apple and he had left because he was committed to implementing SWIR sensors in the iPhone, but had issues with functionality and cost. At that time, Samsung had bought up most of the QD R&D players and Nanoco was left to choose from in terms of securing materials and an R&D partner that had no links to Samsung or any competitors. But Apple shut his research down and Jonathan moved to STM in Grenoble... At that time it was clear Edelman traded with inside information - Nanoco's board seem to have an issue managing these situations. I wonder if the FCA was on him and he bolted to the United States.... Back to Steckel and STM - he has continued his very public research on SWIR and is clearly close to a finished product, but there are also rumblings that the deals with Apple and now ST are tech transfers with milestone payments and are not licensing deals.
Management should come clear on what they mean by "commercial production" especially when we consider that they have never produced anything outside of lab samples. Claiming that we can produce £100m-£130m of QDs at Runcorn is a load of bllx - what does that actually mean? What prices are we talking here, volumes, specs, etc? It seems like another misleading marketing ploy from the CEO and his minions.
Let's be real here, we just gave a perpetual license for display to Samsung for products, which will eventually work out to $0.10 per unit by the end of the life of the patents and these display products use 1000x the amount of QDs that a NIR or SWIR sensor would. The display products also use CFDQ, which Tenner claims no one can produce without Nanoco tech, whilst for NIR and SWIR, these are not using CFQD. My point is, even if commercial deals are in sight, what are the terms... if this is per unit, based on the rubbish deal we just agreed (STM and Apple lawyers are not stupid) we are going to be talking pennies, so even if there are high volume shipments, it again goes back to the question of... what does it really mean for Nanoco's bottom line or is this just good for optics to keep Tenner, Nigel, Gray, and the board in their jobs for the next few years. Lets also remember that all these patents have a few years of life left on them. The clock is ticking and as Steckel himself says, commercialisation is still years away.
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