Tag Archives: Microsoft

Microsoft IoT in Action conference review

November 1st, 2018, by Jennifer Colegrove Ph.D. Principal Analyst, Touch Display Research Inc.

On October 25th, 2018, Touch Display Research was invited and attended Microsoft’s IoT (Internet of Things) in Action conference in Santa Clara. There were about 600 attendees.

Microsoft has a range of programs (Azure IoT, Azure Sphere, Windows 10 IoT, Vision AI development kit) to support partners, building new IoT devices and applications, as well as internal development teams.

Figure 1: Microsoft IoT in Action conference

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft’s General Manager of IoT Solution, Mr. Carl Coken gave a presentation titled “Building Intelligent Edge Solutions with Microsoft IoT”. He first indicated IoT market will grow very rapidly in the next several years. Then Mr. Carl Coken discussed that IoT can be used in many applications: construction, agriculture, healthcare, retail, digital signage, etc.

Figure 2: Microsoft’s General Manager of IoT Solution, Mr. Carl Coken gave presentation

Source: Touch Display Research

Microsoft is simplifying IoT, by using Microsoft’s IoT programs, companies can easily build secure, scalable solutions from device to cloud, and manage devices as scale, find insights from the IoT devices and benefit from IoT. He then invited his colleague Ms. Sarah Matson, Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft to demonstrate how easy it is to use Microsoft IoT software in real life. One scenario: at a construction site, if there is some unsafe condition, such as chemical spill, people can push a Seeed Button, the button will send signal to Microsoft Azure IoT Central, then the manager will be able to know the location of the unsafe condition and send people to fix it.

To continue reading, please subscribe to the Touch and Emerging Display Monthly Report.

Thanks,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

What our clients say

“We like your monthly report. It’s like you are traveling for us to over 10 international conferences each year, and writing travel reports too. Since we are very busy every day with meetings and lab works, we can’t attend many conferences. Your monthly reports keep us updated with all the new trends.”– a client of the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

“I read your monthly report from cover to cover. It’s very informative and helpful.”–a client of the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

“Great report. It’s very thorough.”–a client of our ITO-replacement report

New Trends

About Touch Display Research Inc.

Touch Display Research, Inc. (https://TouchDisplayResearch.com) is a technology market research and consulting firm specializing in touch screen and emerging display technologies such as OLED displays, quantum dots, flexible displays, e-paper displays, ITO-replacement, Active pen, near-eye displays, smart windows, gesture controls, voice controls, and eye controls. Touch Display Research helps technology companies grow and connecting their technologies to the marketplace. We have been writing about OLED industry for over 10 years. We were the first company to publish Quantum Dot market reports. We were the first company to publish Active Pen market report, and ITO-replacement market report. We have always been there to analyze new and emerging technologies. Touch Display Research provides reports, consulting, and due diligence to touch suppliers, display manufacturers, consumer electronics ODMs/OEMs, material suppliers, investors and venture capitalists. We are member of Flextech Alliance, SEMI and SID.

Touch Display Research Membership subscription

Touch Display Research offers membership packages for corporations and businesses who would prefer to purchase several of our services at the same time. We offer 3 levels of membership: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Please see the website membership page for more details.

Google’s Jamboard large touch screen is using metal mesh or silver nanowire

October 28, 2016

This week, Google announced its 55 inch touch display named Jamboard. Touch Display Research believes the Jamboard’s touch screen is using metal mesh or silver nanowire.

Touch screen with ITO-replacement is gaining momentum for >50” sizes category.

3M showed 55-inch touch table with metal mesh touch screen.

C3Nano demonstrated 55-inch silver nanowire transparent conductor touch display.

Microsoft has released their 55-inch and 84-inch interactive Surface Hub that can sense both finger touch and active pen.

In the ITO Replacement—Non-ITO Transparent Conductor Technologies, Supply Chain and Market Forecast 2016 Report, sixth edition, Touch Display Research analyzed over 240 companies and research institutes working on advanced transparent conductive (TC) materials. The report provides a detailed analysis of metal mesh, silver nanowire, carbon nano tube (CNT), conductive polymer, graphene, and other technologies. Figure here is the comparison of several transparent conductors.

Figure: ITO replacement comparison chart

Source: Touch Display Research Inc., ITO-Replacement Report, 2016

Touch Display Research forecasts that the ITO-replacement market will reach $13 billion by 2023. The ITO-replacement industry has made good progress in the touch panel and other applications in the past two years. However, not all companies are growing and you need to be very selective. The specifications of over thirty metal mesh suppliers are compared side-by-side in one chart in the Excel database.

Touch Display Research forecast that ITO-replacement will become the major transparent conductor for touch panels after 2021. ITO will be the minor transparent conductor for touch panels.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Touch screen with ITO-replacement going to mainstream

June 15, 2016

Touch screen with ITO-replacement is gaining momentum for >50-inch sizes category. We can see this trend at SID 2016 DisplayWeek.

3M showed 55-inch touch table with metal mesh touch screen.

C3Nano demonstrated 55-inch silver nanowire transparent conductor touch display.

Microsoft’s keynote discussed their 55-inch and 84-inch interactive Surface Hub that can sense both finger touch and active pen.

Touch Display Research forecasts that the ITO-replacement market will reach $13 billion by 2023.

Figure: ITO replacement comparison chart

Source: Touch Display Research Inc., ITO-Replacement Report, 2016

The ITO-replacement industry has made good progress in the touch panel and other applications in the past two years. However, not all companies are growing and you need to be very selective. The specifications of over thirty metal mesh suppliers are compared side-by-side in one chart in the Excel database.

We forecast that ITO-replacement will become the major transparent conductor for touch panels after 2021. ITO will be the minor transparent conductor for touch panels.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Microsoft keynote about active pen and gesture control at SID 2016

May 26, 2016

At SID 2016 DisplayWeek, Microsoft’s Distinguished Scientist, Mr. Steve Bathiche gave a keynote presentation about the advanced user interface technologies they are working on and his vision for the future.

Steve showed a video of their improvement of the active pen for Surface with less and less latency. Then he said, “Now it feels like real paper; sounds like real paper too!”

Figure: Microsoft’s Steve Bathiche keynote at SID 2016.

Photo by: Touch Display Research

Active pen input is very useful in education, certain language input, medical, finance, industry applications, and content creation. In the recently published “Active Pen 2016 Report (Second Edition),” Touch Display Research Inc., a market research and consulting firm, analyzes more than thirteen active pen technologies. Touch Display Research forecasts active pen writing module (includes pen sensor, pen and controller IC) revenue will reach $6.1 billion in 2021, from $2.9 billion in 2016.

Figure 2. Active pen module market forecast

Source: Touch Display Research, Active pen 2016 report

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

Google accelerates voice recognition devices

May 18, 2016

Today Google announced the Google “Home”, a voice recognition device that will compete with Amazon’s Echo. Similar to Echo, the Google Home could respond to users voice commend, play music, control the smart thermostat Nest, search the internet etc. It’ll be available by end of 2016. Price is not announced yet.

Figure: Google Home

Source: Google

On the same day, Google also announced two voice control based apps: Allo and Duo. Both tap into Google Assistant platform. Google claims their Google Assistant platform is the best voice recognition system.

Voice recognition is also called voice command, or voice control. It is a very critical component for augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence devices. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook are all working on this technology.

In the newly published “Sensors for Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence market 2016 Report,” Touch Display Research analyzed over 30 companies working on voice recognition. This report also analyzed the other 20 sensor technologies for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and artificial intelligence (AI) market. These sensor technologies include: camera-based gesture control, ultrasound and radar based gesture control, eye tracking, voice recognition, photodiode sensors, proximity touch screen, motion sensor, short-range wireless, other touchless technologies, touch sensor and touch pad.

Figure 2: Sensor technology categories in the report

Source: Touch Display Research Inc., May 2016

Over 200 companies working on sensors, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), are profiled in the Excel database.

The “Sensors for Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence market 2016 Report” is available immediately and includes a PowerPoint file (over 300 pages) and an Excel database.

You can subscribe on our website: www.touchdisplayresearch.com in the Market Research Report page or contact us by email: jc@touchdisplayresearch.com

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Microsoft acquired part of N-trig for the pen

May 7, 2015

Recently, Microsoft acquired part of N-trig. Mr. Stevie Bathiche, Microsoft Surface Distinguished Scientist wrote in Microsoft’s blog: “Today we are excited to have acquired advanced digital pen technology from N-trig Ltd., with whom we’ve partnered closely for several years.”

As we know, N-trig was founded in 1999 with headquarter in Israel. N-trig has received over $120 million funding before. Their old investors include Microsoft. Microsoft hasn’t announce the amount regarding this acquisition yet. Rumors hold Microsoft paid about $200 million to acquire the pen-related part asset of N-trig.

Touch Display Research believe active-pen technology is superior to passive-pen technology in terms of accuracy, pressure sensing, and ability to draw fine lines. In the Active Pen report, Touch Display Research forecasted that the market for active-pen writing modules (including pen sensor, one pen, and the controller IC) will increase from $931 million in 2014 to $4.17 billion in 2020.

Figure. Active pen market forecast to 2020.

Source: Touch Display Research, Active Pen 2014 report.

Touch Display Research believes this is a good move for Microsoft. More analysis about Microsoft, N-trig and Apple can be found in the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report, May issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with active pen

May 20, 2014
Today Microsoft announced their new tablet PC: Surface Pro 3. It’s an improvement version over the Surface Pro 2. Although both tablets are with active pen, Surface Pro 3 is 32% thinner at only 0.36 inch, while the Surface Pro 2 is 0.53 inch thick. How does Microsoft Surface group achieve the thinness? The answer is in the touch and active pen technology.
Figure. Surface Pro 3 with active pen

Source: Microsoft, May 2014

Simultaneous finger touch and pen writing are the ideal human machine interface. Active pen technology is superior to passive pen in terms of accuracy, pressure sensing, and input of fine line. In our recently released Active pen technologies supply chain and market forecast 2014 report, we forecast that active pen usage will have rapid growth in the next several years.
Touch Display Research’s “Active pen 2014 report” provides analysis of over a dozen digital pen technologies: nine active pen technologies and six passive pen technologies. All the Android and Windows devices with active pen are compared side by side in a single chart.
The attitude of leading brands toward active pen is analyzed. This includes Samsung, Sony, Intel, HP, Dell, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Apple. You can subscribe to the report right now on our website.

Thanks for reading,
Jennifer and team

Microsoft Surface VP Panos Panay speak about people

February 12, 2014

I was invited to attend Microsoft’s Hardware event recently hosted in their Mountain View, California campus. There were about 100 attendees at this event.

Microsoft Vice President for Surface, Panos Panay gave a very good speech at this event. He indicated “It’s not about hardware, it’s not about software, it’s about people. It’s not only about vision; it’s about people that can deliver the vision.”

After his speech, I asked him about the Microsoft Surface table and tablet. More analysis can be found in Touch and Emerging Display monthly report, February 2014 issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Microsoft Surface 2 and Pro 2 Displays

September, 23, 2013

Today Microsoft announced the updated Surface tablet PCs: the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2. This time both will use a display with the same resolution––1920X1080.

Figure. Microsoft Surface Pro 2

Photo source: Microsoft, September 2013

In October 2012 and February 2013, the first Microsoft-branded tablet PCs were released––the Surface RT and Surface Pro. After years of focusing on software, Microsoft now had a tablet product in addition to hardware lines such as the Xbox game console.

In Microsoft’s July 2013 financial report, the company took a $900 million loss due to the Surface. Obviously, the first Surface tablet PC wasn’t very successful.

As we wrote in the August issue of Touch and Emerging Display report, we believe one of the mistakes that Microsoft made was with the display. A 10.6” size and two different pixel formats for the RT and the Pro were used. 10.6” size was never mass-produced by any display manufacturer before Surface, therefore both of the 10.6” displays were custom made, and that meant a high cost. The result was the high price of the original Surface tablet.

Nevertheless, the second round should be better. Microsoft used the same pixel format this time for both the Surface 2 and Pro 2. More analysis about the touch screen and active pen features can be found in our Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

Sharp and Microsoft both use metal-mesh ITO-replacement touch panels

September 19, 2013

I just came back from Touch Taiwan 2013 and the associated International Display Manufacturing Conference (IDMC). With about 400 exhibitors at the show, it was certainly very hot, just like the weather in Taipei.

I had a chance to touch both Sharp and Microsoft’s large size touch panel in Touch Taiwan. Both use metal mesh type ITO-replacement material on their touch panel.

Figure. Sharp metal mesh touch panel (left) and Microsoft metal mesh touch panel (right)

Photo: Jennifer Colegrove, Touch Display Research Inc., 2013.

Sharp showcased a series of 20”, 32” and 70” touch panels and claim they have very high performance due to the high SNR (signal noise ratio). Microsoft’s 55” touch demo was showcased in Corning’s booth, as they used Corning’s Gorilla Glass as the cover lens.

Touch Display Research believes that metal-mesh type materials have high conductivity and could fit best on large-sized projected capacitive touch panels. We forecast the ITO-replacement market will grow to about $4 billion by 2020.

Which companies are supplying metal-mesh type transparent conductor? What’s their manufacturing process? What’s the market share of metal-mesh vs. silver nanowire vs. carbon nanotube vs. conductive polymer vs. graphene? More analysis can be found in our ITO-replacement report and the Touch and Emerging Display monthly report.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team