Kopin CEO Hopeful New BOE Fab Will 'Help Stimulate' Consumer AR/VR Demand
There’s “no question” that consumer demand for virtual- and augmented-reality products “has not developed” as fast as experts or Kopin expected, said CEO John Fan on a Q4 call Tuesday. Kopin, which supplies consumer AR and VR headsets and head-mounted…
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displays for the U.S. military, expects the startup soon of BOE’s new "state-of-the-art" flexible-OLED fab in Chongqing, China, he said. With it will come “a substantial increase in the supply of low-cost displays,” which will be a “necessity” to “help stimulate” wide consumer adoption of AR and VR goods, he said. BOE has “teams of engineers that can turn a factory on very quickly,” said Fan. The building is finished and the fab equipment is installed, he said. BOE is doing test runs before making the plant operational, he said. With the market infusion of low-cost OLED displays that will result, “the world of AR/VR will be different” by 2019's second half, when Kopin expects to deliver such consumer headsets fashioned from the BOE materials, he said. “Everybody will be very surprised.”