Good morning, everybody, and welcome to poLight's third quarter presentation. Together with me today, as usual, is our CFO, Joakim Bredahl, and our Board Chair, Grete Vikstås. They're sitting here on the left corner and available for you to ask them questions after the presentation. Today's agenda: key events, introduction to poLight for those who are new, market review. We have added a new section, which is kind of giving you a little bit of insight in operation and R&D, financial review by the CFO, an outlook statement, and in the end, Q&A. Since this is webcasted, please wait for the microphone when you ask a question from the audience. For those who are asking questions through the portal, please leave your contact details in case we have enough time to answer to all the questions. Okay, let's move on.
Key events: I would say quite an event-rich quarter and also post-quarter. We received a repeat order from our first barcode customer. You may remember that that was a customer which we acquired in 2020, and the very same product is still in the market. Now and then, placing new orders. Of course, not the high-volume product, but a very key and high-end product, which still is kind of generating revenue for the company. This illustrates the dynamic in this market. It's a very long lifetime. Your news would have between five and ten years lifetime for a product. Also, the volume is relatively low, but the price point per TLens is quite high. This T-Wedge, should I say product concept, is really creating a lot of interest. I've said before, it's not a product yet.
We are on technical samples, but I would say a very mature technical sample level. Currently, we're shipping what we call the version four, and we are in the process of developing version five. Again, a relatively big PO, close to $1 million. Those POs are coming from major players. It's typically big OEMs, consumer OEMs, who are evaluating this concept. We announced also a TLens, quite a significant TLens order, which is meant to be TLens that's used for qualifying TLens into an AR/MR RIP product. That's also one of the big OEMs. Barcode, again, five new products launched to the market using TLens. Step by step, this market is maturing. We are still kind of working hard to find those cases which can give the volume higher, which typically is more towards point of sales.
Still, as we grow the platform, our name is getting more and more known. I think it's a matter of time before we see more design wins and good, important designs in this area. Again, repeat order on the barcode for an existing customer, $1.7 million. Also, Mini2P PO from one of our customers, very few TLens to fantastic pricing. Key events post-quarter, as long-listed as in the quarter, which is good. Again, a repeat order for T-Wedge, close to $1 million. Again, one of the top-tier OEMs. An extremely interesting case, a $5 million PO from a big, again, consumer OEM who is wanting us to... Actually, it's a little bit special thing because it's not kind of us supplying a lot of TLens. It's us being a part of the design of a camera.
Sometimes we see that the experience from involving poLight at a too late stage when it comes to camera development is inefficient. This customer did that, didn't go so well. This time, they want us actually to be in front and be very active in the design of a compact AR/MR reference design, you can say. That's why it's a relatively extensive and untypical program for us to do. Of course, we work very closely with the camera module company and the lens maker. We are kind of interfacing with the big OEM direct. Really, really important case. You may remember we had a design win sometime, is it a couple of years ago? This on this high-end MR headset for enterprise, remember, where they're using us in the video see-through camera. Super, super... Just to recap, this is an MR headset. An MR headset is basically making you blind.
You don't see the real world. You can see the real world through, what you say, eyes represented by camera. Here's a fantastic example of what we always say with a poLight technology that we replicate the function of the human eye. This is exactly what we do in MR headsets. We are basically representing the eye. This camera, this video is being recorded and kind of added to the screen, the virtual screen, the virtual world. They have released a new version and continue using poLight. A quite amazing size repeat order related to Mini2P, $2.6 million. Again, very few TLens, but a very nice price. We had also a PO from a product I briefly mentioned. It's about iris scanning, identification, security. This is now starting to ramp. They placed a PO with us to prepare for that commercial launch.
Not yet launched, but we expect that to happen relatively soon. Then again, a relatively big T-Wedge PO related to a, also again, I would say a top-tier company. I think now, give and take, I don't have top of my mind the exact number, but I think it's a good handful of big OEMs which are now actually using T-Wedge for different reasons. Very interesting because each customer has a little bit different view on how they can use it, how to integrate it, what kind of pain points we are solving for them. Some of them we understand, some of them they don't want to tell us. Basically, relatively many of the big guys who are now engaged. Not only that, they're also engaging, all of those I'm mentioning are also engaging with us on TLens. We have become 20 years.
You can, of course, say to me, "My God, how little you have achieved in 20 years." I take a different approach. We have made a strong fundament. Strong fundament takes time to build. We are looking, it feels like we are moving to a new era. We're looking forward to the next 20. Okay, this is a little bit basic on poLight. We are focusing on growth, of course. We are, you know, the markets we are active in. Technology, unique, I would say absolutely unique technology. Super speed, fast, can raise a very compact solution. No pumping when you change focus, which is incredibly important, say, e.g. for video see-through cameras. Close to no power consumption and very thermal, have this athermalization built in, you can say. All of these, I would say, attributes are, I would say, very much important for the AR/MR space.
AR/MR space is for us, feels like the most strategic, most important market. There are other markets, and we will talk about it a little bit later. Since 2005, listed in 2018, sorry, headquarter in Norway, but we have more people outside Norway than in Norway. That will continue to be the fact. We established resources close to customers and close to partners. There will be a headquarter. We are in Tønsberg now, before Horten. Like Finland, super nice ecosystem for camera, good resources. France, same optical experts, hard to find in Norway. Many good people in France. UK, X-Sharp company, we are having as a partner, as an employee, I would say. US, of course, many big OEMs there. China, super important. Taiwan, same. Japan and the Philippines. We are very, very distributed. 50 people. I don't know how many nationalities you work in, maybe 15 plus or something.
So demanding, but at the same time, very, very, very efficient. Super focused on IP, and we protect our trademark very well. Costly, but important. Yeah. This is our first product based on the technology platform. I like to say that the technology platform in poLight is basically, in a simplistic way, described by a polymer, a lens material, good optical material, in between two glass membranes. That's basically the concept. TLens is bending the top membrane, changing the focus. T-Wedge is tilting the membrane, doing beam staring. Those are basically based on the same technology platform. We are fabless. We are fabless, but we produce the polymer ourselves. The polymer was the start of the company. For those of you who have been with us from the beginning, know that we were part of Ignis. Polymer was the beginning, used for different applications.
Now we are using it for these small compact lenses. We produce the polymer. One liter of polymer is one million lenses. It's very scalable, very scalable. Also, by doing it ourselves, we don't have to tell anybody about the recipe. That recipe is very, very secret. Wafer, which is basically one of the membranes which we can bend, which is kind of replicating the function of your human eye muscles, you can say, is produced as the fab, MEMS fab. One wafer is giving you more than 2,000 lenses. We are shipping these two components to our assembly partner in the Philippines, or now in China, in Q Tech . They are doing the dicing, the dispensing, and the assembly, and testing. Then we sell to the left OEM guys, convince them, you know, you have to use the poLight technology. That's the best.
It's the best you can use. The OEM typically is kind of dictating the camera module guy what to use in their camera. Basically, typically, the OEM is specifying the camera in detail. The camera module guy is basically executing on that instructions. That's typically what happens. Yeah. We have a few target markets. I think the most important market for us as of today, and I would say more than 90% of the activity in the organization is related to the AR/MR. We really feel that both our TLens and the T-Wedge concept are an extremely good fit for that market. That doesn't mean that we are not also doing other things. Generally speaking, the consumer market is something we have a very close eye on. Lately, I would say the most activity has been related to a laptop, actually. There are a few ongoing POCs.
Let's see what happens. Of course, we also explore other kinds of opportunities like smartwatches and smartphone, of course. As I said many, many times before, that smartphone market is really a tough market. Even though we have a success with the Mate 20 Infinity, we can see that this market is very much dominated by the incumbent technology they have used for decades. Coming in there with a new, more expensive technology is difficult. You need to really hit the right kind of customer which wants to be different, and which we did manage with the Mate 20 Infinity. It's really, really, really hard. We are, through our market and sales activity, exposed to this market and will never give that up.
I think it's fair to say that the AR/MR market, which is a much more, I would say, less mature market, there is nothing like an incumbent technology which we have to fight against. We are there in the beginning ourselves. I think it's the most promising and most strategic market for the company, which is good because that's the market which will grow. The smartphone market is flattening out and becoming more and more commodity. All the innovation in the camera side is happening in the AR/MR space, not in the camera module, not on the smartphone side. Those are the potentially high volume markets. It's important for us to come into high volume. Our product is partly made in the MEMS fab. MEMS means you need volume. Volume is important for us.
The very same product can be used in other markets, you can call them niche markets, machine vision, industrial, at a significantly higher price point. Lower volume, yes, but very high gross margin. We are combining high volume, high growth, taking the same product into a niche market with a high margin. That's the strategy. There are emerging use cases. Maybe the most promising one is healthcare. Automotive is not really, we haven't done much there yet other than thinking of it when we do new development. Healthcare is, luckily, we have a, I would say, a very interesting, call it, display in that market through this Mini2P activity, where we supply to these advanced labs. Of course, these advanced labs have smart people, and those smart people sometimes move to the industry, and those take then the poLight technology with them.
I think we will sooner or later be in other types of healthcare type application. Again, we are limited people. We have to focus, and the focus is AR/MR. We do other things a little bit, but that is 90% of the focus. It's good to keep the eye open for other things also, because we also have 20 years to come, at least. At least 20 for me, I hope. That's why we need also to think about outside the box. Yeah, starting to be a quite messy slide, which I like. Hopefully, in the next year to come, it will be even more messy, and maybe we have to divide it into different slides. As you can see, good references on the AR/MR side on the top left, which we are using very actively to promote.
I see that we have actually lacking one there, which is the fifth one, which is the MR headset, which we have now two, so five in total. Barcode is growing. We have the consumer, which is basically the same as last: Max Hub webcam, two smartwatches, and one smartphone. Okay, I've added one slide per market segment to be a little bit more generic. What is this market all about? I think the statement here, AR/MR, is we feel that now consumer devices are going mainstream. It's coming more and more. This market size is really difficult. If you look at the reports, there are different numbers, but IDC is claiming these numbers. Those numbers do not include smart glasses with no display.
As far as we understand, those types of glasses, you know, one of them is typically the Meta glasses, is now getting, that industry is getting more than 10 million. A very significant number. Take these numbers with a grain of salt because they are difficult. What you can say is that definitely now we can see the growth much more visible. For many years, this market has been seen to kind of shifting to the right. Last CS was a very good indicator that this is now actually starting to happen. When I talk to the customers, they actually related to, say, smart glasses, they had surprise problems because the market is going faster than they dare to believe. It's a good momentum here now. What you also see is more and more OEMs are positioning themselves.
One of the top executives told me one day that, you know, every glass will sooner or later be a smart glass. Interesting. I think the way we also see it, it was very U.S. Bay Area concentrated, this development. What we see now is that China is coming more and more. We know how good China is in ramping and executing. I think this is really, really an interesting market. It's U.S., China is the main players. We are, as a company, both on the smart glasses, AI glasses, AR glasses. What they call it is changing every quarter. In China, now it's AI glass. That's the smart glass. AR glass, then you add the display. I think the volume today is on the smart glasses, and that will continue to grow. Like the Ray-Bans and the Oakleys, and many, many companies are planning similar types of glasses.
For those glasses, you can see there are typically when we have a camera on both sides. Also, depending on the display or not, that will be then the space for the T-Wedge. The T-Wedge will be on the display side, and we will be on the camera side. An AR glass and AR glass down the road may actually both use T-Wedge and TLens. We have the MR headset. The MR headset is kind of, if you talk to the executives in the industry, a little bit disappointing because they were really hoping that the MR headset would be what we used when we were working. Yes, there are people doing that in the enterprise, designers, training. Like the MR headset from this company we have been designed into is a very high-end, used for training and pilots and stuff like that. Designers, car manufacturers.
They are used for that, for sure, but also low volume. The dream was that we're going to use it sitting in the office and doing the work. That is happening, but not at the scale one was hoping. To the MR headset, it's still a quite sizable market, and it will grow depending on a little bit of the application. I think one of the key things here for that to grow from a professional perspective is that it needs to be comfortable. It needs to be light. It needs to be easy to use. Today, that is at question, I would say. In that application, we are already having so many cases being explored and used for us. I think that, and here we can be used in a video see-through camera, and we can be used in the cameras, outward-looking cameras.
Many different applications, and also T-Wedge, of course. The other consumer market, as I said, smartphone, big market, TLens mainly fitted for selfie camera, laptop web camera, big market. These are existing markets, that's why we approach them. Wearables, yeah, smartwatches. I think smartwatches will have increasing functionality: a phone, a camera, AI. A camera is key for all these applications, but we are competing with incumbent technology, for sure. On the consumer side, now I'm going from the more generic talk about consumer to what's happened during the quarter. We already mentioned some of the key events. Focus on AR/MR and laptop and webcam. We see more and more of the cases, those statements highlighted in blue, are maturing from assessment to real product discussion. As I said, this announcement we have a post-quarter of NOK 5 million.
It's an example of what kind of role we can take in this industry, AR/MR. I would say many of the big guys see poLight as the best fit, and that's why they engage with us. Here you can see, this is consumer. We have four design wins. We have 22 POCs ongoing. These are consumer. 19 of those related to AR/MR. We have 19 planning, and 15 of them, again, related to AR/MR. Very AR/MR concentrated. There is an enterprise, I would say, application, which all the design wins, and one design win, and one new design win is related to enterprise. As I mentioned, we had a repeat win in this area. It's interesting to see, actually, many of the consumer-based players are actually buying these kinds of devices for them to test.
It's not only an important design win as a design win, but it's also very important to build trust by the consumer guys and have that they actually can buy something and test something and get the experience of what we can deliver. It's a very, very good, important marketing tool. I think enterprise also will grow, but it will not grow in the same way we assume as the consumer. Barcode quickly. Many things are driving that market. I've listed many, many, many things here. AI, image scanners, 2D scanners replacing 1D scanners, like barcode critical for patient information tracking, digital payment, governmental initiatives. It's quite a high number, expecting units to go from 15 million to 30 million in 2034. Definitely a market which will grow and which has many, many important drivers. Same is for the machine vision.
Manufacturing, cost efficiency, automation are things which are driving this market to grow. There is a standard called Industry 4.0. Robotics means cameras, and these are more and more integrated. We have some very interesting Norwegian companies in this space also. I think that there's no reason to not expect a profitable and good market for us. They will always represent a niche and always represent a, I would say, a lower opportunity, but a very, I would say, attractive gross margin. I'm always saying that it will take time to grow this market, and that is the case. Third quarter showed good progress. Five new products were released. We have an accumulated order intake of $2.2 million in this, and a significant part of that is related to existing customers, repeat customers. We are doing a very interesting program now together with a partner. We call it M12.
This can potentially really add significantly to this market segment. M12 is a, you can say, a catalog lens which incorporates the poLight TLens technology. We are trademarking this as MLens. M12 is a standard. Before, when we talk to these kinds of customers, typically it's a relatively extensive work to be done to take a TLens into a scan engine or machine vision product. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of NRE, and that's why it develops slowly. It takes a long time for these kinds of customers to integrate TLens. MLens is a way of defining a standard part. You can see the bottom left there. This is typically the standard where they just basically have a holder and they screw in a standard camera. Very easy. That's exactly what we do now.
We make a couple, three of these lenses fully integrated and adapted to the M12 standard. We call it MLens. Just screw it in, plug and play, and hopefully no plug and play. That's a very interesting market. It's supposed to make it much, much easier. We are also developing the ecosystem around it when it comes to software and electronics and everything. We actually have pitched this to Innovation Norway, and they have given us funding for this program, actually, which is also a quality stamp. We have already started to massage the market. Now we are moving from selling a lens, TLens, to selling a solution. Now we are moving to selling for some few dollars to 10 times more than that in value. Stepping up in the value chain, increasing revenue. It's a very, very interesting and profitable business case as we see it today.
We are going to start more and more marketing, and we have received super positive feedback from the market so far. So three lenses will be made. They look like this. That will be the start, and then hopefully we can expand the portfolio. Okay. Healthcare. I think I mentioned the most important thing during my key events. Mini2P is there, good. We will continue to push for that. Low volume, high margin. We are seeing also some commercial endoscope cases. I really, really hope one day I can tell you that now we are in an endoscope. We were very close, you know, remember the laparoscope? That was a disposable one. The ones we are involved in now are actually multi-use, which is not good for the volume, but good for the environment maybe. Now we are involved. The showstopper in the endoscope has been megapixel.
They're using very low megapixel, Omnivision 2 mega, which basically do not need any AF. Now they're moving to a 5 mega, which is a different ballgame. Let's see. Here you have the sum up from the market side. 38 design win, 5 design in, 134 completed POC, 57, and 47 planning. Good progress. Here you can see that percentage in the graph. This is Eyvind Buer's graph. Operation and development review. This is new. I thought it may be interesting for you to get a little bit of insight in. I'm normally focusing a lot on the market. You know, I'm a market guy. I also have a history of being technology-focused. Here is a little bit on that. I would say that the statement here is I feel that we are step by step being more and more professional, and we are ready for ramp.
I'm just back from Asia where we had an audit with one of the big guys checking us, basically, very demanding things. I think it was approved. They liked what they saw. Of course, always some comments for improvement, but so far so good. We feel that we are professionalized and that we are ready for ramp. The strategy is fabless except the polymer. We have owned resources close to the manufacturing partner. You can see the picture on the top left there. It's a picture from the opening of the Philippine office organization. Now we have eight, nine people. Those eight, nine people, since we are fabless, what are they doing? They are basically the specialist, which is overlooking the quality, supporting the assembly partner, and they are also supporting what's happening in China with Q Tech .
These are our specialists, our kind of trained specialists to support partners. In-house capabilities, as I said, polymer, data management, extremely important. Everything being produced of lenses, we have data automatically into our databases. We have dashboards where we can see, okay, how is the yield? What's this, what's that? Do analysis. That data management has been a massive investment. We have full control remote for everything that's happening in the manufacturing line. Headquarter is fully equipped. Some of you have been there. Everything that's happening in the Philippines or in China, when it comes to manufacturing, we can do the same in the headquarter lab, of course, low volume. All the assembly processes have had a history of being developed in headquarter, and then we deploy it into partners. Any issues happening, debugging will happen typically in headquarter where we have the specialist.
It means that there is a very close interaction with what's happening at the headquarter lab and the assembly partner. Super, super important and expensive. Very, very expensive equipment we use. Those of you who have been there have seen it. When it comes to the, now we have two assembly lines. The picture on the top right is from the Tongxing. This is basically the area where we produce the TLens. I had to beg very, very nicely to get this picture. They don't like to give me pictures of the fabs, but here it is. This has been operating for a long time, very mature. This is where the customer went for audit last week. Now also we are establishing a line at Q Tech . That is the bottom right picture. This is a similar line, but they use green dresses instead of blue.
This is a very similar line. A very similar line is basically a copy of the line which we have developed together with Tongxing. The status on the Q Tech line is that all equipment is installed, more or less. Process per equipment is under tuning and qualification. We are already producing TLenses for trials. That's where we are. Customer which is triggering the Q Tech investment in poLight is of course following this progress very, very closely. I'd say the cooperation is really, really good with Q Tech . Also we can see from the customer base we have that the fact that we now have, what should I say, both outside and inside China is for the customer seen as a very, very big advantage, of course. We have produced as of today more than 1 million lenses.
Just to clarify that, very few of those are inventory. This is mainly things we have shipped. Also, in the beginning, of course, the yield was very low. Some of these are kind of not being sold, used for mechanical samples, and some of it is already sold. The less part is things which are in inventory, but that's relatively few. It says that it's not like we are not being produced. We are relatively mature, specifically in the Tongxing line, and sooner or later also in the Q Group line. On the R&D side, I think it's fair to say that over the last few years, we have increased focus on innovation, definitely. It's also fair to say we are extremely loaded with pre-sales customer support. The tech guys are knowing the technology so well.
When the big guys, specifically the big guys, which I've been kind of mentioning, kind of not who it is, but what type of customer that is, is extremely capable. They have unlimited resources, and they want to build the detailed knowledge of the TLens and the T-Wedge themselves. They don't only want to take our data for granted. They want to do it themselves. They install equipment for doing very, very basic testing of the components, which we already have done, but they would really like to see it themselves and do it themselves. It's an extremely fundamental kind of activity they are doing. They don't want to take this into high, high, high volume without being damn sure that this is a good technology we can trust. You wouldn't imagine how demanding it is to work for these big guys. Extremely demanding.
Very, I would say, very motivating, but also very demanding and very, very tiring. For a company being 50 people, it's a big ask. My organization is really, really working hard to create shareholder value. That is something you need to understand, that this is not a walk in the park. This is really, really tough work. That's why a lot of the resources are being used in that area. We are very active on making reference design. We would like to make designs on the camera module level, which is purpose-made for a particular application. That's what we call reference design, so it's easier for a customer to bring us in. We invested heavily.
If you look on the right there, we do kind of all kinds of simulation and testing of lens stack and where to put the TLens, how to do it, you know, very, very detailed, hardcore optical design. We have in-house capability of that. We've developed that over quite some years now. That's basically a picture of a lens stack for different applications. We're doing basically the lens design of typically fitting difficult applications. Lead-free, very interesting program. That will be kind of the next generation TLens will be based on that platform. We received, we know have been, yeah, quite promising, but we can also see many challenges. That basically will be a TLens with no use of lead, which is important for some of the OEMs and probably more OEMs as time goes.
We hope to have some samples in the end of the year or beginning of next year. It depends how things develop. That's going to be extremely exciting to see when we put the voltage on those lead-free TLenses to see how they behave. That can be very important, potentially very important spin-off goodies in going TLens. I'm not going to tell what and why, but there are some very interesting side effects by going to a lead-free TLens. Over and above that, this is something which some big customers would really like to see, and as such, it opens a much bigger market for us. Bigger TLens has been an ask for many customers, and we have done a lot on the bigger TLens.
We think we have understood what we can achieve, and I think we have been less focused on that the last quarter due to other priorities. T-Wedge, we talked about it a lot. You can see the animation on the right bottom side. You see the picture of the TS something X, I think it's three actually, which is a relatively small device, which is then doing that wobulation, which increases the resolution in the display, but also has other functions. Next, again, will be TS5. Hopefully, it will be something we will have in the first quarter next year. That's a little bit what we are doing in R&D. My dear CFO.
You can take a breath now.
Yes, thank you.
Yes, for the financial review, we had a revenue of $5 million in the quarter. This is in terms of product sales. This is the highest revenue we've had since we shipped Mate 2 in 2023, Q2 2023. That's a positive milestone. The revenue consists mainly of over 50% AR/MR. The rest consists of industrial and healthcare, as can be seen to a certain degree by the POs received in the quarter. If you look at the year-to-date composition, it's an even split almost between AR/MR and industrial. There's a 17% that's made up of healthcare and consumer. The gross profit margin in the quarter is just above 50%. The OpEx is $6 million, up from the same quarter last year, which is due to a certain degree from higher personnel costs in R&D and sales particularly.
That in turn is driven a bit by the share option costs, which is quite front-heavy when we introduce a share option scheme. A lot of the cost is taken early. That also reflects that. If we move on to the balance sheet, the most notable aspect of the balance sheet is the cash position, which is close to $300 million, which is of course also with the capital infusion from the subsequent offering that closed early July. The inventory is down, and the main drivers of that are cost of goods sold. There are several different factors influencing inventory, but mostly it's cost of goods sold, and it's the change in the obsolescence provision that we do every quarter based on the age of the inventory. I think we can move on to the cash.
The net increase in cash during the quarter was $25 million, mostly driven by the subsequent offering, which was oversubscribed and closed at net $48.1 million. We had cash from operating activities of $22 million in the quarter, which is $3 million higher than the same quarter last year. This is mainly due to increased networking capital because we have invoiced in the quarter. We haven't received the cash from the invoices yet, so that has a negative effect on the networking capital. In the investing activities, there's $1 million. That is some upgrades we did to a machine that we have consigned to the Q Tech client. Some upgrades we did there before we sent it to Q Tech , which gave it some additional functionality than what it had before. That concludes the financial review. I hope you had a breath.
Thank you, Joakim. Outlook. One slide only, and then Q&A. As I said in my CEO corner in the report, if you read that, I really feel that we are moving towards a new era. I said that last quarter. I feel it even stronger this quarter. I'm not saying that it's going to be easy and a walk in the park. It's going to be extremely many tough things we need to handle. Some will fail. Some will be successful. It's all about building an organization which somehow is able to handle the challenges. There will be challenges. It's about building an organization with an attitude, with a goal to make it happen. I really, really feel that we will be an important player in some important markets. I will be the first to admit that things have taken a lot of time. Let's keep pushing.
I think the likelihood of making this a great success for all employees, shareholders, partners, customers is very high. Super positive to the outlook. At the same time, I'm also super honest about the challenges. When you see all the major OEMs who are working with us, both on TLens and T-Wedge, and remind you, T-Wedge is not a product yet. I think it stands for itself. It says that we are in and we are playing in the Champions League. I think still wide adoption of TLens, huge volume is still ahead of us. It's not going to happen next quarter. It's not going to happen next year. I feel there will be good signs next year, which is kind of will be a proof that we are on the right track.
Hopefully I'll be able to give you proofs next year that things are going in the right direction. Don't expect kind of high volumes. Expect higher volumes, but not super high volumes. I think all these opportunities we have in front of us really need us to continue investing. There will be high spending in the company still. There will be big losses. We need to invest in the organization. We need to invest in the customer relationship. Just explain how heavy it is to support these big guys and how much time and effort we spend on it. Traveling, establishing organization worldwide. Now we are doubling the China office. We are establishing major lab facilities in China to be closer to the customer. There are huge, huge investments which are needed. Of course, the strategic partnership.
I would say that the fact that Q Tech is now a part of us, is part of the cap table, shareholder, partner, has been a tremendous help, of course. Hopefully all these investments will pay off. Some of you have been there for many, many, many years. I hope we can be together for many, many more years. Thank you. Okay, Q&A, Joakim?
Yes.
I have a flight to catch, so please limit yourself.
Yeah, we only have one question.
Oh, one question. Okay.
We don't. We can start with some of the questions that came in before.
Yes.
Regarding the display solution that was previously removed from the designing platform, has there been any renewed interest or activity related to that solution?
No.
Quick. How is the progress with the Zebra barcode project developing? Are there any updates or milestones you can share?
Have I talked about Zebra? I don't think so. We are working with all the major guys also on the barcode side. I'm not allowed to be specific on any names.
Has poLight observed growing interest in camera technology for smartwatches? Does the company see TLens as the relevant candidate in this segment?
You know, this is my frustration, to be honest. I feel that all the smartwatches I have, I have, of course, the Apple one. I don't understand why they don't have a camera. For me, it's completely stupid not to have it. You know, you're jogging, you're fishing, you don't want to bring your big phone. This is already a phone. Why don't I have a camera? I feel it must come. Is there any short-term activity on it? On and off, yes, but not major.
What potential do you see for TLens or T-Wedge in simpler or more affordable eyewear products?
Yeah, that's a good question because if the top executive is correct that all glasses will be smart glasses, some of them with display, some without display, some with camera, mostly with camera maybe. I think there will be different grades. At the moment, remember, those smart glasses which are out there are with relatively simple cameras with no AF. That's today. We, of course, are very close to many big names and they also believe that AF is something they need to have sooner or later. I think it will be glasses with very simple, no AF, and there will be cameras or glasses with AF. I think they will coexist. Remember the smartphone? The selfie camera, as an example, was a camera for many, many, many years without AF. Now AF is there for most players, for the flagship at least. I think they will coexist.
Here's a question from someone who's been doing some research. I see TS Precision has widely advertised on LinkedIn that they have good expertise in poLight and TLens and that they work with many different verticals. Could this mean that more camera module manufacturers will promote poLight tech because Q Tech has taken such a position, or could there be other reasons for this?
I know TSP very well and management there. Good company. We have done a project with them. They are quite good. Actually, one of the products which is still, I think, can be bought, a consumer product, is a TSP camera. They are proactively kind of promoting us in different segments and we are supporting them. I think it's a little bit independent of Q Tech , to be honest. Q Tech will have their own kind of motivation to promote TLens to customers because they are a big shareholder in poLight so t hey want us to be successful. This is an interesting dynamic. Before, many of the camera module guys have been vertically integrated, meaning they also have lens stack. They also have VCM. Of course, they will like to use their own technology.
That is one dimension which will not make them promote TLens because they have their own technology, whereas Q Tech is changing that dynamic. Q Tech does super proactively promote TLens since they are an investor in poLight and believe in the technology. TSP is a company which is less vertically integrated. They will maybe like to be seen as very innovative. They don't have internal competing memory technology. For them, it's easier and they want to be seen as competing on more very innovative. We know the market and we know the technology. It's a very, very big mixed bag what's happening there. I feel that, as I said in the beginning, the most important thing for poLight ASA to do to get the market position is to convince the OEMs because it is the OEMs who dictate.
OEM dictates. That is why we are spending 80% on communicating and convincing the OEMs. Of course, we do support the camera module guys, Q Tech and all the others, but the OEMs are the absolutely most important stakeholders to convince.
Speaking of camera module manufacturers, here's a bulk of questions about Q Tech . These came in before your presentation. If you have answered them in the presentation, you can just refer to that, I think. Can you tell us a little about how you've worked with assembly line number two that is being set up in Q Tech ?
Yeah, that's actually quite an extensive work. As I said, I was in the ASAP a couple of weeks now. Together, while I was there, there was, I think, 10 people from us at Q Tech supporting Q Technology Group to get up and running with the line. It's a very close cooperation. We are the guy who's kind of transferring knowledge to the Q Tech line and work very, very closely with Q Tech . A big investment for us, being 50 and 10 of them is in the Q Tech factory. You can imagine it's a huge investment for us. It's important for us. Remember why Q Tech is putting up the line. It's because one of the big consumer OEMs in the U.S. wanted to use our technology, but wanted to have one of their strategic partners to be capable of assembly TLens.
You know, it's a ticket to a big OEM.
Referring to that, how many customers do you have to work with through Q Tech ? It's a question that can be seen in two ways.
Okay. I would say I have to work with, you know, we love customers, so we want to work with all of them. I think what I can say, I suggest I reply in this way. Q Tech is extremely proactive in promoting TLens and poLight. When they have meetings with their customers, when relevant, they always invite poLight to be there. That's quite, of course, they are one of the number three camera modules in the world. They have a lot of big customers, and they always use the opportunity to invite one of us to join these meetings, to do demonstrations. Very good relationship, very good.
How are you working with Q Tech going forward now that the collaboration has been established?
Of course, we support them on the assembly line. That's not going to stop because, as we told you, we have established a team of eight, nine people in the Philippines to support our assembly partner in the Philippines. After having worked with them for 15 years, we're still there. This is why, because we continuously improve the processes together. We are responsible for the final test machine and the data management around that. The same team, plus some headquarter people, will need to do the same with Q Tech line. It's not that we can disappear. We are the guys. We are improving the TLens. We are making new versions. There needs adoption in the manufacturing line. We have to have a very strong team backing our assembly partner. We know TLens best. On the market side, we will, I'm sure, continue to work very actively together.
As an example, as I said, Q Tech will always try to bring us into key decision makers, which we normally don't have access to. We are typically very often pushed into the R&D guys. I'm trying to climb the stairs and get to somebody with a manager with decision power. We have a tougher job to do that than Q Tech , of course. They bring us in to important meetings and important decision makers. Also, I think that, and I hope that through Q Tech , we can, what should I say, we can hopefully get into more standard solutions. Say if Q Tech has a standard camera module for this application and that application, maybe that over time they can also have those standard solutions with TLens, which will help us scale without going through a lot of NRE and engineering work.
There is an off-the-shelf TLens camera module, which a customer can buy. Typically, the tier one OEMs, the big OEMs, they always want to do it their way. They want to have their own image sensor, their own revision of the image sensor, their own lens stack, their own this and their own that, and their own spec. There's a big market outside the big OEMs who cannot afford to do that. Prismate camera. They could kind of potentially make a little bit off-the-shelf design, which I think is easier for us. I'm not saying that we can only do that with Q Tech , but I think it's easier for us to motivate Q Tech to do it with us than other camera workers. I think that's also one important dimension of the relationship.
Some questions related to purchase orders that have come in and we've announced. poLight has reported two POs, purchase orders, on TLens to top-tier U.S. consumer OEMs this fall. Are these two different OEMs?
This looks like a Richard question. What I said is that we are actually a good handful of big OEMs, and you will know the names, OK? Are engaged with us on TLens and T-Wedge.
This is a very, I think this is, I don't know if you even know this number on the top of your head. poLight has reported several purchase orders on T-Wedge. Can you say anything about how many different customers have purchased test kits with T-Wedge and how many of these are top tier?
I would say all are top tier, and it's around five-ish.
Impressed. Regarding the two top-tier announcements, this is the one supporting Q Tech, the Q Tech transaction, and the one where we're developing a camera lens with the. The $5 million. Yeah. How confident are you that poLight's technology will pull through? How dependent are these products of TLens and T-Wedge, and are they also considering other options?
Good question. What should I say? Of course, not every case we are working on will go all the way. That would be too much to ask and expect. I strongly feel, without being too specific on those two, that where we are today and what we see today, we are moving into a new era. I think the visibility of our success is increasing every quarter. Will it be easy? No. Will it be a disaster? Yes. I strongly believe that we will prove that we have a good technology and that we can ramp. I would say, you know me, I'm very positive. On the same side, I'm also very open that there are challenges to be handled. I would say I'm very positive to the outlook. What more can I say? I'm very positive.
Something related to AR/MR, a more general statement. You state, while widespread adoption is still a few years away, poLight is making steady progress each quarter. We, the shareholders, have heard this expression, a few years away, a few years already. How much are we moving closer to a commercial breakthrough, and can you define what widespread adoption means? In this segment, are you expecting significant design wins before the widespread adoption takes place?
Good question. Yes. You know, it's difficult to predict, especially about the future, as he said. I think that there's no doubt that the AR/MR market, which is our kind of prime focus at the moment, is a market which, more than me, is struggling to have very clear visibility on what, when will what happen. It's basically difficult. I do feel that we are moving now. If you go two years back, you definitely see a much higher visibility. You see more OEMs. You see Chinese coming. I think there are many, many strong signs that things will now happen. I think when I say, it's not that I'm not saying that it takes another few years before we see something. I don't think so. I think huge volumes, millions, millions, tens of millions a year, I think is still some years away.
Not driven by that we cannot, but because the market takes time to develop. That doesn't mean, as I said, I think I will be able to show you progress also throughout next year. We have shown progress this year. We will also show progress next year, both when it comes to design wins, and hopefully then we can see some good revenue coming in that segment. It's not that it's not going to happen in a few years from now, but huge volumes are in front of us.
You have a design win with Magic Leap already. How do you work with, for example, Magic Leap going forward? Can you say something about that, how you develop the relationship?
Yeah. We are still in engagement with Magic Leap. They have gone through quite a big strategic changes. We are part of that process in a way, and we are part of their roadmap. That's, I think, the best I can see.
Yeah.
Sorry.
You've said something about the market temperature in the AR/MR vertical, but this question here, in which geographic areas is it going the fastest?
Yeah. It used to be U.S., and I think you will see China picking up quickly.
How far along are you with the M12 project?
Yeah, I think we talked about that.
Which customers are you talking about that can buy?
Yeah.
Yes.
Cannot say.
No, cannot say.
We're talking to many.
You reported on several projects moving to the left in maturity in the table for Q2. How does poLight experience the work in barcode moving towards projects that are closer to the consumer? Which projects within barcode do you think can have the highest value for the company going forward?
Yeah. I think we are still in the process of building the platform. I think M12 program will help a lot for machine vision in particular. We do have an interesting case now, which is promising a completely different volume, like hundreds K instead of 1K, 2K, 10K. Those are possible. Of course, you are starting to approach the consumer, and you know what happens then, the pricing or don't. Volume or price down mechanism, of course. Getting one of these kind of point of sales design wins, which is basically where you or me are, you know, shopping, is something which will drive volume and reduce price. One of these will be super interesting to finally get. We're trying that. We will build our platform stronger and the value of our offering stronger in the machine vision through the M12 standard lens.
I think those are the very important things. Building step by step more design wins in the scan engine, barcode reading customer. We have a huge customer base in China, many, many, many players. Each individual is typically needing like 5 to 10K per year. There are many of them.
Moving on to the medical health care segment, a relatively large PO came to Mini2P a short time ago. Can you tell us more about how the work with Mini2P and the manufacturers of these scopes are going? Are you working on new versions or other things in the vertical?
We are not working on, sorry, step back. The industry there is working on new versions. Likely, we will be a part of those new versions. One of our customers is also wanting to expand and widen up the wavelengths. We are making special coating for that application, which we are doing. Actually, we are also engaged with another, I would say, simpler device to Mini2P, but potentially higher volume with a different company. It's been an interesting experience. I said in the beginning when I meant Mini2P that I did this because I felt it was something right to do and to do not only what has commercial value, but which is something which our technology can be used for the greater good, for the human beings. I have to say that that's still my feeling in my heart.
There's no doubt it's been incredibly higher volume than I ever dreamed of. I think that will continue.
Another question about TS precision. I see they write that they have delivered samples of TLens modules to an endoscope project in China. Are you able to tell us more about this?
No, just confirm positive. This is one of the cases TSP has been working on and others. TSP is, we know them very well. Quite active, relatively small, but quite active.
To a subject that's important in the semiconductor industry, you're working on a lead-free TLens. When can the prototype with this be ready? Can you say anything about who is running this project, poLight/SteamWave Coral?
Oh, yeah. Yes, I mentioned it briefly in my presentation. This program is very interesting. It is potentially unlocking a new market for us, definitely. How can I say it? We think we will have the first result end of this year, beginning next year. You know, this is very advanced technology development, so difficult to be very precise, but around there. From getting those first results, then we will understand more. Is the force we get from this kind of new material sufficient to have a TLens with sufficient optical power? That's one of the key questions. Do we need more layers? Do we need to wait for that material to develop further? This is material without lead, and they are less strong. We will learn a lot in the next, say, quarter or so. If positive, we will continue, of course.
It still will be some time before that will go into mass production. This is a program which we work together with a lab and fab company in Singapore called IME . We do that together with STMicro. STMicro has a fab in Singapore, had for many years. Together with IME , they have formed this lab and fab, which basically is a laboratory inside a fab. Whatever we do in that lab and fab can relatively easily be transferred into the mass production, ST. It is supposed to be quite a smooth transition from the lab. This gives us, having working together with IME , something completely new dynamic. We have only so far worked with ST in Nagata. ST in Nagata is a big fab. You know how fabs are and operation people are.
They don't want to do any changes because they just want to run volume, volume, volume. IME is engineers, highly educated engineers in the MEMS world. They are used to being flexible, changing this, changing that, trying this, trying that. We have a completely new dynamic in trying new things with variants of TLens, more compact, this and that. Having done the ST lab and fab, easy transfer to mass. A completely new dynamic, very interesting program, but expensive. How far are we?
Oh, that was only the pre.
OK, we have 15 minutes left. Is that OK?
Let's try. We do have some quite technical questions. We can ask them, and we can see, and maybe we can.
OK, because I said I have a.
You have a flight.
I have a flight, yes.
How does the static image quality of a TLens-based camera solution compare to similar VCM-based cameras? What potential challenges does a TLens face when comparing image quality, brightness, corner sharpness, and chromatic aberration, et cetera?
My God.
This is quite.
Where is my studio?
Yeah, there's a follow-on. Will a larger TLens be able to meet the image quality requirements for camera modules with larger sensors?
OK, I think I need to answer that a little bit generic. Of course, TLens compared to VCM is adding a glass membrane in front of the image sensor. We're adding another lens. That comes with, of course, reflection/transmission issue, which we don't have if you remove that lens. You're adding another glass, and that is, of course, adding to it. That's why transmission/reflection is very important for us to manage. That's why we do a lot of AR coating, anti-reflective coating, to optimize and minimize that problem. That's something we work on. When it comes to comparing to VCM again, VCM is moving the lens stack up and down. We're adding a lens, adding an interface, and then we bend. That bending is creating what you call field curvature effect by physics. It's impossible to avoid it by design.
Field curvature effect means that if you are looking at the picture you take with a TLens-based camera and get very close, and you have taken a picture where the object is exactly aligned, ideally, like 90 degrees to the camera, you can see some blurring effect in the corner. That's the field curvature effect. Any tunable optics will give you that. You don't see that if you are further apart, which you normally will be. You're further apart, you don't see it. We call it the lab problem. You only see this in the lab because in the lab, you can align everything in a completely kind of ideal way, plain, what is called parallel. In real life, it's bulky, it's a paper, it's something a little bit like that.
You will never see this problem in reality and from a distance like, say, 10, 20 centimeters, only when you get very close and completely parallel to the camera. Yes, those are the things typically camera engineers who have worked with VCM for many, many years are kind of concerned about, this kind of extra membrane. You need to have very good ARC coating to optimize reflection/transmission, which we do. We have very good transmission. Also, this field curvature effect. One thing which we have always been saying, field curvature effect, if you absolutely would like to get rid of it, which we feel you don't need to think about, but anyway, the speed of TLens, which is extremely high, will give you an opportunity to take not one picture, but say five pictures. You combine those so that the field curvature will disappear and everything will be in focus.
A question about patents. poLight's foundational patents expire within the next three years. It looks like potential competitors already have granted patents for new variants and improvements based on them. Do you fear that players will freely use your core technology to challenge you on quality, price, and volume, mirroring the VCM scenario? Furthermore, could the Q Tech partnership potentially reinforce competitors' motivation to build their own supply chains based on these expired patents?
Yeah, another good question. I think from the IP side, we are working very heavily on that. Even though there are kind of some core patents which expire in, whatever, say, three, four years, or whatever it is, we have additional patents, which is kind of adding to the core patents, which in effect protect us longer. Meaning that we say we have the patent we have, and then we add another patent which improves the quality, which improves the flexibility of the TLens so that that kind of, in effect, protects longer our performance compared to competition. We are working very actively on that. I think you never know. There are many smart people out there, and they can do something similar. By doing what I'm saying, I think we will always be ahead of them when it comes to performance.
I think it's an extremely difficult technology to replicate. We have used 20 years. We have worked with the best MEMS fabs in the world. We have the best team in the world within tunable optics. Even if you have something and you think you are going to do it, it's going to be extremely hard for you to manage to copy what we do. There will be people doing something. On a positive spin or positive note, I think having competition is also very healthy. Actually, this is one of the things which concerns our customers, that we are single sourced. Of course, if you have something a little bit similar, but maybe not so good, maybe that's good. I think that I've always said, if you go back to quarterly presentation, I always said I think competition is good. I think we will not be alone.
There will be solutions also. We are where we are. There is nobody close to what we can do today, for sure.
Just a comment on how T-Wedge is protected from the same competitors, given that its protection is only indirect via the core TLens patents, not specific to that platform itself.
Is that the question or comment?
That's a question, a comment by you.
Yeah.
How is T-Wedge effectively protected from the same competitors?
Yeah, in a way, we claim that the T-Wedge also is protected through the same basic patents. Of course, we have patents application to enhance the protection of T-Wedge.
Yeah.
Ongoing.
A question regarding the competitive landscape for TLens. In the short term, we see several emerging focus technologies like liquid crystal lenses, electrowetting lenses, polymer membrane lenses, sensor shift MEMS, and shape memory alloy. In the longer term, we see a fundamental disruption towards tunable metal lenses, which could potentially revolutionize the entire market. How is poLight positioning itself strategically in this landscape? What is the risk that other technologies, especially metal lenses, will outcompete TLens?
Yeah, we know metal lenses, and we follow that. Today, we don't see it as a threat, to be honest, for the application we are targeting. We need to watch out and follow that closely.
Regarding the enterprise design in that is expected to launch in the second half of 2025, is it wearable? How many TLens are used in the design?
Which one is that?
Regarding the enterprise design, it's expected to launch in the second half of 2025.
I'm not sure which one you're referring to, to be honest. Enterprise design in. It could be the Iris one, maybe. Yeah, it could be the Iris one. We don't know. They claim that's going to be launched this year. We don't know for sure. I'm probably going to be meeting the customer next week.
Do we know how many TLens are used in that?
I think it's one. One, yeah.
Yeah, it's a question regarding the T-Wedge POs. You mentioned different use cases from a handful of top-tier players. Can you talk about some of the use cases more in detail?
No, not detail because, to be honest, we don't know the details. The customers are very secretive. Resolution enhancement was the beginning. That's still there. Dead pixels, which is the fact there is in the micro LED panels, dead pixel, we smoothen that out so that can a little bit disappear. We compensate for that. Moving your head will cause motion blur, and we compensate for that. Those are kind of the three on top of my head applications. There are others. It's amazing to see every customer have their own kind of take on it.
I think if we have time for one question, two questions?
Yeah, yeah, we still have five minutes or something.
OK. Why is it that the consumer industry is not converting from fixed focus to TLens? Is it price, risk of durability issues, performance, or is it something else?
Consumer.
The consumer industry, consumer segment.
It's not converting.
It's using fixed focus.
Related to what? OK, let me try. I think, yes, today, those smart glasses are using fixed focus, if that's one case you're thinking of. I think they will move towards AF. Basically, the fact that the megapixel is quite high and the use cases are increasing, they will need to move from fixed focus to AF. There will be different AF technologies. We think we have the best, but I'm sure there will be others. I think there will be glasses with cheap cameras, fixed focus camera, and there will be glasses with AF. I think there will be a combination. He's right that today, it's very much fixed focus.
Have you started to design production lines for T-Wedge? Will they be different from the TLens lines?
You can say yes or no. We are doing all the assembly of T-Wedge at headquarter in Tønsberg. We are, of course, when we're designing new revisions of T-Wedge, we do that with design for manufacturing in mind. The next revision, TS5, this fixed version of the technical sample, will be easier to manufacture, hopefully, than the first versions. Sooner or later, we need to move out from headquarter lab. When we feel that the design is mature, we will engage with typically an assembly partner. The assembly partner we have today is typically assembly partners which also can do T-Wedge. The processes will be different, of course, but a lot of pick and place and dispensing, those are the same. From an assembly perspective, it's more. At the same time, currently, we don't use wafers. This is bulk piezo, so you don't have the wafer challenge in a way.
When you say super high volumes, what kind of range are you expecting? NOK 20 million? NOK 50 million? Even higher?
No.
You were referring to volumes of units earlier.
Yeah, when I said millions, I meant I talked about units.
Yeah.
Yes.
When will we see larger aperture TLens? How many projects do you currently run?
Yeah. We have prototypes on a new concept of TLens, which has a different actuation, which doesn't use MEMS again, which we understand quite well. We think it's a design which is quite attractive for many professional applications. We will kind of stop that and say, OK, we know what we can do. We know the performance. If we see the market developing and the needs there, we will push that to mass production. We think that still the cost structure of those concepts is, we believe, too high for consumer. I think it will be more the enterprise professional market which will need that. Of course, you may remember, we have actually a TLens Silver. We have TLens Silver Premium, which is today in mass production. We have, you remember, the TLens Platinum, which is a bigger aperture. It's 2.2 aperture instead of 1.9. That's still there.
That's still kind of on and off being discussed with customers. That is based on the same TLens structure as of today. As I said, we have developed a new concept, not wafer-based, which is kind of using a little bit of the same experience we do when we do type T-Wedge development. Those are kind of understood. We understand the performance. We need to wait to see what kind of size market that can fit. I would say in my quarterly report, we are in the process of defining what we can achieve and try to then map that to which market that can adapt. I don't think that's a consumer-driven application as the performance and cost is today.
I can answer this question if you want to read through these and see which is your last one. The question here is, when does poLight expect to see positive numbers? I think it's a bit given from what Øyvind's been saying about volumes. It definitely follows from volumes. It's a costly affair to develop, sell, and develop the customer relationships associated with this technology. We need to keep the organization running. We need to build the competence in the organization. That's a cost base. From an income standpoint, that's where the profitability will come. That will come when we see greater volumes in the TLens. Jokingly said, you can always say that once the gross profit eats up the OpEx, then we'll be profitable. That's just finance. It's a matter of building volume. It's hard to say because it's not only dependent on us. We're doing all we can.
It's also depending on the general market development.
OK, you can take this, this, this or this. Yeah.
OK, all of them.
Yeah.
Referring to your 134 completed POCs and considering that many are several years old, what is your forecast for these converting to design in? What proportion of this group do you consider deemed obsolete?
I think this is a very good question. It's also very difficult to answer. Typically, they do POCs. They do POCs for that application, for this application, with this in mind. They kind of conclude their report, put it in the basket. They are informing product management that we have done this, and we qualify this technology and that technology. For us, we don't really have visibility of how many of this POC is being kind of in the basket, good to go, or in the basket, we don't need it. That we really don't know. I understand the question. It's very difficult to us to be very concrete. As I said, many of the POCs we just done are for people to be ready.
We see that many, many want to, as they see success, they also would like to make sure that we need to understand how to utilize this technology. There is a potential catch-up effect in these completed POCs, of course. Some of them will never realize to design wins or design ins because maybe it didn't fit that particular customer for that particular application. Our visibility of that is relatively low.
Do you think there will be released consumer-oriented glasses from top-tier OEMs containing TLens with lead? Or do we need to wait for the lead-free TLens for these projects?
No, I think there will be, based on the present TLens, there will be applications, yes.
Yeah, will poLight.
Actually, a very important question.
Yeah, exactly.
We triggered the TLens lead-free because of a particular case and a particular market. We believe that TLens lead-free will be important for many. I would say the mainstream of everything we do is the existing TLens. Good question.
Will poLight supply an ASIC controller designed to manage the entire light engine projector system, including source image decoding and control of the micro display, light source, and the T-Wedge probably later?
Can that guy apply for a job at poLight?
I was thinking the same thing.
OK, can you please send us an application? I will personally read it and invite you for an interview.
Very good practice.
Fantastic. Yes, good question. We are currently designing or considering to design a new driver, a new ASIC driver, which will take into consideration lead-free, which will take into consideration T-Wedge, which needs multiple channels. That's, of course, quite an extensive investment, which we are currently planning. Those will be limited to driving the T-Wedge multi-channel and driving a lead-free TLens, which is different and which opens actually new opportunity for us when it comes to optical power.
Given that the TLens is specified for over 1 billion cycles, which is a threshold that could be surpassed within months of a high-frequency display application, what is the specified cycle lifetime for the T-Wedge?
I think it's very similar to TLens. I don't have the details. Drop me a mail, including your CV, and we will come back to you.
Excellent. The last question for today. Regarding the autofocus strategy for TLens in AR/MR, do you see the future as primarily reactive, driven by sensor data like PDAF, or predictive using TOF and eye tracking to anticipate user intent? What is your vision for this, both in the short and the long term?
You know, this is one thing which is very difficult for us to be very precise on because typically, user customer do not share their strategy to how to drive TLens. We see applications where there will be AF. We see applications and [audio distortion] to use that. We also see applications where they don't. They don't have resources, or they don't have plans of doing a closed loop or AF, basically an open loop system. I think there will be a mixed bag. As I said, this is one of the things we are telling the customer. You need to be open to us. You need to tell us your strategy, how to drive the TLens, because then we can guide you in many aspects when it comes to design. Difficult area for us to get into.
I think you will see, again, a mixed different strategy, depending on the application. Some applications are camera and video. Some applications are completely sensing or what have you, related to AI.
I know you love talking to our shareholders, but there are no more questions here.
Any in the audience?
I know several from the audience have sent in questions.
Yeah, I see Daniel has sent already. Yeah.
No questions. You have respect for that Øyvind needs to catch the plane.
Yeah. I really like all these questions. It's really making our presentation a marathon, of course, which is painful. At the same time, also, it's giving us a completely different dynamic. I'm impressed by the knowledge you have established on poLight. That knowledge, you just keep on developing. I hope we can have many, many next 20 years together and successfully together. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being in the web. Thank you.