Apple watch with OLED screens

Japan will begin to supply organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens for the Apple Watch later this year, two sources said, a breakthrough for the cash-strapped company whose late shift to OLED has cost it orders from Apple.

The supply deal would mark Japan Display’s foray into the OLED display market, the two sources familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

Japan Display’s mainstay liquid crystal display (LCD) business has been slumping due to Apple Inc’s recent shift away from LCD, and disappointing sales of the iPhone XR, the only LCD model in Apple’s 2018 line-up. Aspokesman for Japan Display said he could not comment on specific customers.

The OLED display market is dominated by Samsung Electronics unit Samsung Display and LG Display, with Chinese players quickly catching up. OLED displays are generally thinner and allow more flexibility than LCD screens.

Samsung Display is currently the exclusive supplier of OLED panels for iPhones, while LG Display provides a majority of panels for the Apple Watch.

Hiroshi Hayase, senior director at IHS Markit, said it is a positive step for Japan Display, but added that the company would face a tough road ahead.

“Hurdles would be high to win orders for iPhones,” Hayase said. “Samsung Display has built up its experience, technologies and production capacity over more than a decade. Can Japan Display really compete with such a rival and make ends meet?”

Shares of Japan Display jumped as much as 7.6 percent in Tokyo trade on Wednesday after the Reuters report. The stock finished up 6.3 percent at 84 yen.

Japan Display, which gets more than half of its revenue from Apple, has a small OLED pilot line at a smartphone screen plant in eastern Japan.

It is seeking investment from a group that includes China Silkroad Investment Capital (CSIS), sources have told Reuters. The company has said it is aiming for as much as USD 990 million in fresh financing.

The Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday the company board would vote on investment plans by the start of next week.

Japan Display and the group are planning to build an OLED panel plant in China using Japan Display’s technology to produce smartphone panels, which need a larger line that normally costs 200 billion yen (USD 1.8 billion) or more to launch, the sources told Reuters.

Japan Display’s technology uses a slightly different manufacturing method and equipment from Samsung to avoid infringing patents held by the industry leader.

Global smartwatch display shipments increased by 42 percent to reach 149 million units in 2018, driven by better synchronization functions with smartphones, according to IHS Markit.

BITCOIN JUMPS 20 PERCENT, MYSTERY ORDER SEEN AS CATALYST

The original cryptocurrency soared as much as 20 percent in Asian trading, breaking USD 5,000 for the first time since mid-November. Bitcoin soared to its highest in almost five months on Tuesday, pulling smaller cryptocurrencies up with it, after a major order by an anonymous buyer set off a frenzy of computer-driven trading, analysts said. The original cryptocurrency soared as much as 20 per cent in Asian trading, breaking USD 5,000 for the first time since mid-November. By mid-afternoon, it had settled around USD 4,800, still up 16 per cent in its biggest one-day gain since April last year.

Today’s gain was probably triggered by an order worth about USD 100 million spread across US-based exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp, said Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, chief executive of cryptocurrency firm BCB Group. Bitcoin surged to near USD 20,000 in late 2017, the peak of a bubble driven by retail investors. But last year prices collapsed by three-quarters, with trading dominated by smaller hedge funds and crypto-related firms.

“There has been a single order that has been algorithmically-managed across these three venues, of around 20,000 BTC,” he said.

“If you look at the volumes on each of those three exchanges – there were in-concert, synchronized, units of volume of around 7,000 BTC in an hour”.

Still, analysts could not point to any specific developments that could explain the mystery buyer’s big order. Cryptocurrency markets had until today seen a period of relative calm through the year, with bitcoin trading around USD 3,300 and USD 4,200. Big institutional investors have largely stayed on the sidelines. Concern over security breaches and regulatory uncertainty were cited as reasons for the lack of mainstream enthusiasm in digital coins. In a sign of bitcoin’s failure to gain an equal footing with conventional markets, Cboe Global Markets - which offered the first US bitcoin futures contracts in 2017 - said last month it would no longer offer bitcoin futures contracts. CME Group Inc continues to list its futures product, which launched soon after Cboe. Outsized price moves of the kind rarely seen in conventional markets are common in cryptocurrency markets, where liquidity is thin and prices opaque. Big orders tend to spark buying by algorithmic traders, said Charlie Hayter, founder of industry website CryptoCompare. As bitcoin surged, 6 million trades occurred in an hour, Hayter said - three to four times the usual amount, with orders concentrated on Asian-based exchanges. Bitcoin’s surge sent smaller cryptocurrencies, known as “altcoins,” trading higher. Ethereum’s ether and Ripple’s XRP, respectively the second- and third-largest coins, both jumped by more than 10 per cent. Price moves of smaller coins tend to be correlated to bitcoin, which still accounts for just over half of the value of the cryptocurrency market. "Usually bitcoin is the leader of the market and altcoins tend to follow, as far as direction and sentiment is concerned,” said Mati Greenspan, an analyst at eToro in Israel. “Today bitcoin is in the driving seat.”

Smart pajamas to help you sleep

Scientists have developed ‘smart’ pajamas embedded with self-powered sensors that provide unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of heartbeat, breathing and sleep posture – factors that play a role in how well a person slumbers. The garment called ‘Phyjama’ could give ordinary people, as well as clinicians, useful information to help improve sleep patterns, said researchers from the University of Massachusetts in the US.

“Our smart pajamas overcame numerous technical challenges,” said Trisha L. Andrew, who led the team.

“We had to inconspicuously integrate sensing elements and portable power sources into everyday garments, while maintaining the weight, feel, comfort, function and ruggedness of familiar clothes and fabrics,” Andrew said in a statement. Getting enough quality sleep can help protect people against stress, infections and multiple diseases, such as heart and kidney disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, researchers said. Studies have found that quality sleep also increases mental acuity and sharpens decision-making skills. Yet most people do not get enough sleep -- or the right kind, they said. Although some manufacturers of smart mattresses claim the products can sense movement and infer sleep posture, they do not provide detailed information to the sleeper and are not portable for travel. Commercially available electronic bands worn on the wrist give information about heart rate and monitor how much total sleep the wearer gets. However, there has not been anything that a typical consumer could use to monitor posture and respiratory and cardiac signals when slumbering. The key to the smart pajamas is a process called reactive vapour deposition, researchers said. “This method allows us to synthesise a polymer and simultaneously deposit it directly on the fabric in the vapour phase to form various electronic components and, ultimately, integrated sensors,” Andrew said.

“Unlike most electronic wearables, the vapour-deposited electronic polymer films are wash-and-wear stable, and they withstand mechanically demanding textile manufacturing routines,” she said. The Phyjama has five discrete textile patches with sensors in them. The patches are interconnected using silver-plated nylon threads shielded in cotton. The wires from each patch end up at a button-sized printed circuit board placed at the same location as a pajama button.

BlackBerry forecasts higher revenue as bets on new tech pays off

BlackBerry Ltd beat estimates for quarterly profit and forecast fiscal 2020 revenue above analysts’ expectations on Friday as its focus on fast-growing markets like autonomous cars and cybersecurity pays off, sending its shares up as much as 15 per cent on Friday.

The company forecast revenue growth of 23-27 per cent for the year, implying total revenue of between USD 1.13 billion and USD 1.16 billion. Analysts on average were expecting USD 1.09 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

BlackBerry, which dominated the smartphone market nearly a decade ago before losing out to Apple Inc’s iPhones and Android devices, has switched to selling software to corporations and government agencies under Chief Executive Officer John Chen. 

“This was the first time in many years ... that (we) overcame the quarter-to-quarter decline in handset revenue and services fee,” Chen said on a call with analysts, indicating the transformation was now complete.

Revenue from BlackBerry’s technology and solutions segment rose nearly 20 per cent in the quarter, supported by the company’s focus on QNX, a software used by carmakers to provide infotainment and other services to customers. QNX is used in more than 120 million cars worldwide.

“We are winning the lion’s share of the deals” in the market for embedded software in auto, Chen told Reuters.

BlackBerry had 14 design wins in automotive in the fourth quarter, of which only three were for infotainment. The rest included non-infotainment applications such as software used in autonomous vehicles.

“It’s good to see them getting design wins away from infotainment ... seeing those design wins in autonomous driving is a good indicator for them,” CIBC Capital Markets analyst Todd Coupland said.

The company’s fourth quarter also benefited from a 71 per cent rise in revenue from its patent licensing division.

BlackBerry currently has over 100 patents in the application, with more from Cylance, a cybersecurity company it bought for USD 1.4 billion in February.

Licensing and intellectual property revenue was USD 99 million in the quarter.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company’s net profit was USD 51 million, or 8 cents per share, in the quarter ended Feb. 28, compared with a loss of USD 10 million, or 6 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding one-time items, the company earned 11 cents per share, beating the average analyst estimate of 6 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Revenue rose 9 percent to USD 255 million.

BlackBerry’s shares were up 13 per cent at CUSD 13.47 in midday trading after touching a high of CUSD 13.71.

Next OPPO phone has a hidden selfie camera

We all want a perfect selfie camera, but thanks to the obsession with all-screen displays, we don’t like the sight of a front camera.

There came the unfavourable notches, followed by the hole punch standard, and now, OPPO wants to hide the selfie camera in a wedge on top of its upcoming Reno smartphone.the latest video spotted on Slashleaks, the upcoming OPPO Reno smartphone appears to feature an all-screen display while the front camera is tucked in a wedge-shaped slider that pops when you launch the front camera.

As for other specifications, the 11-second clip only showcases the blue colour variant. Previous leaks indicate Reno will feature Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC with 6GB/8GB of RAM, 128GB/256GB default storage, and run Android 9.

AWS announces general availability of Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Amazon Web Services announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, a new storage class that provides secure, durable object storage for long-term retention of data that is rarely accessed. At just $0.00099 per GB-month (less than one-tenth of one cent, or $1 per TB-month), S3 Glacier Deep Archive offers the lowest cost storage in the cloud, at prices significantly lower than storing and maintaining data in on-premises magnetic tape libraries or archiving data off-site.

Organizations in many market segments (e.g., financial services, healthcare, and government, etc.) are required to retain data for long periods of time to meet regulatory compliance requirements. In addition, there are organizations, such as media and entertainment companies, that want to keep a backup copy of core intellectual property. These datasets are often very large, consisting of multiple petabytes, and yet typically only a small percentage of this data is ever accessed—once or twice a year at most. To retain data long-term, many organizations turn to on-premises magnetic tape libraries or offsite tape archival services. However, maintaining this tape infrastructure is difficult and time-consuming; tapes degrade if not properly stored and require multiple copies, frequent validation, and periodic refreshes to maintain data durability. Additionally, it is difficult or impossible to do machine learning and other types of analysis directly on data stored on tape. Now, with S3 Glacier Deep Archive, customers with large datasets they want to retain for long periods will be able to eliminate both the cost and management of tape infrastructure, while ensuring that their data is preserved for future use and analysis, such as in oil and gas seismic exploration and developing autonomous vehicles. Customers can still use S3 Glacier when they want retrieval options in minutes for archive data, while S3 Glacier Deep Archive is ideal for customers who want the lowest cost for archive data that is rarely accessed. In the event that recovery becomes necessary, the objects can be recovered in as little as 12 hours with S3 Glacier Deep Archive versus days or weeks with off-site tape.

UPS launches drone airline to deliver medical samples

The drone will then fly along a predetermined flight path, monitored by a trained remote pilot-in-command. In one of the first efforts towards commercialising drone delivery in the US, the United Postal Service (UPS) and Matternet are set to launch a new drone airline to deliver medical samples.

As the official press release of UPS states, the program will take place at WakeMed’s Raleigh campus with oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and North Carolina Department of Transportation.

The sytem will use Matternet’s M2 quadcopter that is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. It will be able to carry medical payloads weighing up to about 5 lbs. over distances of up to 12.5 miles. 

A medical professional will load a secure drone container with a medical sample or specimen, such as a blood sample, at one o WakeMed’s nearby facilities.

The drone will then fly along a predetermined flight path, monitored by a trained remote pilot-in-command, to a fixed landing pad at the main hospital and central pathology lab.