Royole may not be on your horizon of display developers and manufacturers, but they have closed a Series C funding of $172 million for a total of $190 million in funding. While this does not seem a lot when you are developing display technologies, it is plenty when it comes to putting out new devices. Based on their university background (Stanford, China) they are focused on transparent / flexible displays and touch films.
They have a very interesting goal for the company in “define the future of information display”. This is a big goal for a less than four year old company. They have shown highly flexible display films based on OLED technology as well as touch films. It seems that their expertise lies mainly in application of thin film electronics to transparent and flexible film.
Source: Royole X
Anyway, the flexible OLED was not the highlight of the Royole presentation anyway (hard to believe but true) it was the Smart Mobile Theater headset that combines a ‘virtual’ headset with a “circumaural” headphone set that folds down for easier storage.
The headset uses displays that seem to be based on the flexible Royole OLED technology, as they claim an insanely high pixel density of 3,300 ppi, similar to their claims for the flexible display. On the other hand, this sounds like some micro displays in the market as well. When asked on the lifetime of these displays (the transparent flexible type) I received an answer of ‘several years’. This may be good news or bad news depending on the use case. I do not believe that any consumer electronics maker will bring out a product where the display is designed to fail in a ‘few years’. When asked about the resolution of the headset I was told that this was 3,300 ppi with a contrast ratio of 10,000 to 1 and a maximum brightness of 300nits (200nits at normal setting). A very interesting answer. I think there is a steep learning curve ahead for Royole if they really want to stay in the CE business.
The headset did feel good on the head though, and the device is available with storage of 16GB. The unit is available on the website for $699, not a small price by any means. Royole states that this is not a VR headset and they are correct as most VR headsets today include head tracking, which is missing from the Royole X headset. As a matter of fact after trying many headsets, I have to say that this was a good move from Royole as it limits the motion comfort issues I experienced with many other headsets. It will allow the user to watch a movie with the same comfort of holding a tablet in front of you. – NH
Analyst Comment
Those of us that saw the Royole were impressed with the lack of pixellation, but were a little disappointed by the small virtual image size. In its suite, Samsung was showing a large (5+”) 800 ppi display for headset use. (BR)
