High-tech

Due Diligence: MicroEmissive Displays

By Bipin Parmar

Introduction

Micro Emissive Displays (MED) was founded in late 1999 by Peter Deyner, Dr. Jeff Wright and Dr Ian Underwood, as a spinout from Edinburgh and Napier Universities. MED received angel investment in January 2000. The company has come along way since its seed (Chilli S3) round of $2.25M in September 2000 from 3i. It generated its first working prototype in February 2002, 18 month after the initial seed funding. The working display was a very important milestone, as it proved that organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology had a real world applicability rather than a pure research project typical of many technology-led startups. The company first sampled to its first prospective customers at the beginning of June 2002 and is now gearing for the first full production run.

MED's management team is led by ceo Bill Campbell, formerly of Tensilica, Avant! and Synopsys and cfo Alan Bennie, formerly of IndigoVision. Executive chairman Peter Denyer was previously founder of VISION, later acquired by ST Microelectronics. Currently 80 percent of share capital is held by external investors and by Cambridge Display technology, in return for their display IP, which was licensed to MED. The balance of the equity is held by the founders, management and staff.

Funding history

OLED technology

Use of existing manufacturing flow

End user benefits

The Chilli perspective

Funding history

The company released its first product, the ME3203 micro display in July 2003 at the British Embassy in Tokyo. The company is currently negotiating design-in contracts with selected ODM digital still camera, digital video camera and camcorder ODMs in Taiwan and Japan

OLED technology

An OLED (organic light-emitting diode) is an electronic device made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. A bright light is emitted upon applying a small electrical current. When applied to displays, OLED technology allows the development of displays that do not require backlighting, as they are self-luminous. This helps to create thin and compact displays. MED's microdisplays are tiny high-resolution displays built directly onto CMOS silicon substrates. By using magnification they create an image that is larger than the physical size of the device, allowing high-resolution images to be viewed on portable products with minimal impact on battery life. MED's OLED display technology has its major application in the electronic viewfinder (EVF) category, which is currently populated by a whole plethora of miniature CRT and CMOS/LCD Technology.

MED's technology is unique in removing the need for many additional electronic and optical components of external light emitting source, filters and frame store controller logic, thus reducing the total bill of materials (BOM) by fifty percent. MED's polymer OLED-on-CMOS display doesn't require the additional real estate of converting video data to field sequential colour, frame store memory and display controller logic.

Use of existing manufacturing flow

Because the technology uses CMOS-like semiconductor processing, use can be made of existing manufacturing capacity, tools and logistics, thus reducing the risk of volume failure. In addition to this, the technology could easily be integrated with the control logic ASIC, thus further reducing device count, power consumption and system cost.

End user benefits

The product offers several user advantages such as the ability to combine the viewfinder with the zoom capability consumers increasingly expect from digital still cameras and camcorders. The recorded material can be immediately played back after recording, viewing the images via the electronic viewfinder.. User-defined text can be overlaid on the display, rather than from a fixed selection of symbols. The switching speed of MED's OLED viewfinder is measured in microseconds compared with the conventional speed of LCDs of milliseconds; this allows for better representation of fast moving pictures and eliminates the blurring effect experienced with LCDs.

The Chilli perspective

Early adopters: the major challenge for any new displacement technology is the timing, which has to be synchronised with not only legacy design partitions and design cycles, but also persuading the design teams to take an alternative, more risky but lower cost approach. In other words, MED faces the typical problem faced by most startups, that of initial customer inertia. Early adopters, especially other startups, who can see the clear benefits of reduced BOM, lower power consumption, etc, and can jump-start new products and processes free of legacy, would be a natural target for MED to gain commercial traction. The company therefore needs to identify and work with other startups (sometimes, new project teams within larger companies) that can integrate the display within their system solution.

Reliability: until volume production has taken place and been deployed in the field, all reliability claims are based on modelling and pilot trials. MED claims it can deliver more than 1000 hours of reliable display. Hence MED will need to work with the rest of the industry and present a convincing case through more publicity, marketing and selective field trails with its partners. Field reliability is one of the most important selection criteria for branded consumer products.

Volume supply: MED's products have applications (digital still and video cameras) which run into millions of units. Convincing a potential, large consumer OEM, of reliable supply, logistics, customer service and product quality is a huge challenge for the management team. The current management team have the necessary credentials to manage this growth. A large global semiconductor supplier, with extensive global reach, logistics and manufacturing capacity would be an ideal partner for MED and its potential investors.

Financial viability: European VCs have seen very few role models of successful large volume, technology startups and may not appreciate the potential rewards from such a venture. It may be strategic for MED to solicit the participation of a large US, Singaporean or Japanese VC to complement existing investors. This will further create the confidence level, required by some large consumer OEMs to adopt MED technology.

In summary, the company has a very compelling technology, which has clearly defined applications and a global prospective customer base. Its management team appears to have the experience to overcome many of the short-term challenges highlighted above. If the company can deliver the required volume and reliability, then it could be expected to reach a very steep revenue curve, within a very short period of time, opening up some alternative funding sources and allow further expansion of its portfolio, markets, applications and customer base. It has the potential to allow integration of its technology into next generation mobile phones, which will expand its addressable market space. There are very few UK based startup companies that can execute, deliver, have blue chip customers with real revenues and a road map to break even, We believe MED to be one of them.

The issue for both the board and existing stakeholders is that of long-term viability via strong relationship and partnerships with large potential customers, partners and additional global investors.

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© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2003

06SEP2003