Kopin Corporation (KOPN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody. Welcome, everybody, to this CES show. I'm amazed how many people are here today. As you well know, under the pandemic, I can never believe that I'm actually giving the talk with a mask on, and so is him. But I think today is very interesting. Everything is being live streamed. So many people cannot come. I know people in Hong Kong, our people in China, people actually in California, they all want to see this show. We talked about the Metaverse. So first of all, we also have food and drinks afterwards so that you don't have to be worried about it. And it's going to last about half an hour to 45 minutes. We're happy to talk to you after that. With that, Chris, go ahead.

All right. Thank you, John. Well, thank you for inviting me, first of all, to attend this and moderate our fireside chat. There's no fire here, but that's okay. It's informal is the point here. So we're going to talk about the road map from Solos all the way to the Metaverse, whatever the Metaverse is.

And in fact, I think I'd like to start the first question to you is, what is the Metaverse?

This is a most wonderful question. As you will know, Metaverse is extremely popular. The last few months, you heard everything about Metaverse. But in fact, Metaverse has been around for a long, long time. Even when we're young, we always imagine a different universe. It's our fantasy world. Currently, Metaverse seems to be if you see something, that is Metaverse. That's not true. Humans have five senses. One is voice; all the voice is sound. The second sense is sight; we see things. These two are the most important of the five senses. Then you have touch. Then you have smell. Then you have taste. So how do you define Metaverse? So our definition is a continuum. It's a continuum of a physical analog world with this imagined virtual digital world. You can go from a very small [indiscernible] to very big [ bang ]. You can go from sound. Also you can go to sight. Eventually, it could be touch. And maybe even at the end, I don't know when, you will have the taste in there. Until you have all this, do you really have another universe? So I think this is my long way to answer. I think the Metaverse has been around all the time. So our thing, our journey, and I can go back to the journey, it's really started 30 years ago. When [indiscernible] asked us, can we put a computer on the head, hands-free for the soldier, so we identified a couple of things you need to be done. It cannot be a CRT on the head. So we put the whole idea of solid state screen, micro screen, has special optics to magnify. The other thing that they want is, what is the input/output? They're hands-free. We see it had to be voice. And voice -- because of the military, that [indiscernible] was, can it be noise-free so that in a battlefield, you can work? So therefore, we developed two technology. One is a micro screen with optics. One is what we call now is that Whisper technology that allow you get noise-free whisper, easy to hear, easy to -- easier to communicate, so out of the noise-free whisper, we have the Solos, which we'll go later on, going to get people to talk about the Solos. And that's the first Metaverse. It's the -- I call it a sound Metaverse. Sound is as important as sight. You cannot have such sight without sound. What is your VR set with no sound? Forget it, right? So I think people get too narrow about it. So that is the most important. So go ahead. I'm sorry I -- long way to...

Well, I mean that's a good point. I mean when people look at a movie, they always say that the sound is 50% of the experience, right? So why would that be different in an immersive experience or a virtual experience or an augmented experience? And you're right. It's only -- we're only talking about two senses for the most part at this point. Sometimes they got a little bit of haptic, but it's sight and sound and haptic a little bit at this point. So if it's a continuum of experiences from the very minor to the very immersive, what's a good starting point? Is sound a really good starting point for this?

This is a very good question. If you look around you, we are all users. We're humans. What do you use for the sound? How big the market is? Almost everybody has a headset, has AirPod, okay, then phone cost. Just think about the smartphone. The smartphone started with a full sound. Your smartphone started with sound. It wasn't -- there was no screen there, right? It was -- but it actually connect us to the world. This is a sound universe. I can talk to people in Hong Kong to Japan. So this sound started [indiscernible]. The smartphone started with a sound. Then you put a screen in them. This is exactly what we do. Solos like it sound, give the sunglass,; but then eventually you want to see sight. So it has to be on the head. It has the around you. It's not the AirPod. How are you going to put a screen in the AirPod? But AirPod sells $25 billion sales last year, $25 billion. It sells more than Tesla. It's just sound only. It's a light little thing in the ear. I think people have to understand -- I mean we do a lot of microdisplays. So we can talk about the -- people know and say, "Oh, yes, you don't have a display." Now we have a lot of beautiful display. But we also say sound is very important. And I think after sound is going to be display. So you're going to see two types of things going on. We're going to have sound, and we're going to put displays in them.

Right. Well, actually, maybe this is a good time to invite Paul Baker to come up and talk about Solos because these are sound glasses that are directly developed to solve simple sound problems. But Paul, please come up and join us.

So I'm Paul Baker. I'm COO at Kopin, and I'm here actually standing in for the folks at Solos. We're close partners with Solos company, and some of the Solos folks couldn't come here because of the pandemic, so I'm happy to step in because this is a fun product to talk about. As John and Chris have been saying, Solos is really about the audio universe. And one of the principles that John really instilled in Kopin is the idea of human first in terms of technology products. But as you know, the world is littered with technology products that it was too much technology, all at once, forced upon the consumer, and it's more than sometimes than the consumer can digest. And so as John and Chris were just talking about sort of the incremental step for Metaverse, we believe there's one stop along the way. That's audio Metaverse. And so that's really the genesis of Solos smart glasses. They're audio based. They have many of the functions that you guys are familiar with. You can take your phone calls. You can listen to music, listen to podcasts. It's got its own ecosystem, so you can utilize applications with the glasses. It has got some really unique features. But one of the most important ones is, as I was just saying, human first. And one thing that we know is that if people don't feel good about how these things look on them, they will not wear them no matter how good the technology or how fun the technology is. And so we've designed -- or Solos has designed the glasses with that in mind. If you have a chance to go into the next room, you'll see that there is more than 50 different styles of glasses, sunglasses, blue light filter glasses. And one of the really unique things about Solos is what's called the smart hand. All the brains of the system are in the stem on both sides. They're removable so that the user can change the front face to different styles, same with the sunglasses so that they -- their investment in the technology resides in the stems that go with them. So lots of people like different looks for different occasions and different uses. So that's one of the novel things about this that enables really a fashion sense with these glasses and options for the customer. And one of the things -- so why are these important? Why do people want them? As Chris and John were saying is it's a step towards the Metaverse further down the road, and it's a step that consumers can take and digest how to sort of evolve their use. So one of the...

And if I may, it may not just be a step. It's a valid point that can be persistent point because there are applications. This is all you need.

Yes. No, very true. That's -- to that point, it's all you need. One of the things that we find is that while there's many uses for the glasses, what is very clear is that very specific uses resonate with certain people. So some people for whom these, they think of them as their work-from-home glasses. They wear them all day long, they're on Zoom calls and Teams calls all day long, and they just keep their glasses on literally all day long. If they wear glasses, they've got prescriptions; if they don't wear glasses, they have the blue light filter because they're on their screen [ call ]. For other people, it's athletic, running or biking. They love that because they don't like running with being out on the street with something in their ear where they can't be as aware of their surroundings. So for them, their starting point is running. But then because there's multiple uses, multiple applications, they start to branch out from that. That's the starting point. You see young people, students like to listen to music while they study rather than have either one earbud or two earbuds in their ears. They can listen to these. They can have their blue light glass on as well. And interestingly, we in our own company, sometimes we have workers that work with one earbud in their ear. And we certainly discourage that, but the glasses really are sort of their option. What they're finding is, hey, just I'm listening to something all day long. I need to be able to hear when somebody is calling my name or calling attention or there's some noise around me. So it affords [ them ] that opportunity as well. So the key that we see is there's lots of things that you can do with these. [indiscernible] listening to music, get phone calls, podcasts...

I was talking to a guy who uses them for watching the TV. So it's not loud, but you can hear his children if he needs to.

Yes. Yes, and there's applications. There's cluster applications. There's other applications. [ It's even ] compatible with [indiscernible] and other sports applications. So again, people have a very specific starting point, and then they kind of branch out from there. The wonderful thing about these is the technology -- the other technology inside it, in fact, just won one of the CES awards, is the Whisper technology that was really started at Kopin. It is a very unique technology in how it handles noise in a loud environment. So we're going to think of you're wearing these glasses in a restaurant or while you're walking down the street, and you can see in New York City, probably 50%, 40% of the people walking down the street have some form of earbuds in their ears. These glasses enable them to walk around without closing off their hearing to the outer world, but if they are, for example, talking on the phone with somebody, the Whisper technology blocks out all of that surrounding noise, so the person on the far end is just hearing the person's voice. They're talking to Tom; the voice sounds just like Tom. They're not hearing the sirens, the horns and everything else that's going on around them. That, as I mentioned, is called Whisper technology. That was -- that really started in Kopin, and it's used in these glasses as well. And then the last thing I would say is if you haven't experienced a 360-degree directional sound, these glasses have it. It's really a unique experience where you hear the sound as it intended coming from different directions so that if you're listening to the high-fidelity music, it sounds like you're in the Sydney Hall, if you're watching a high-definition video. And often, as Chris was saying, sound is an important part of that experience. You're hearing a loud noise from over there. You're hearing the voice from over here or from behind you, et cetera. It's really unique; it's actually -- there is a demo [indiscernible] here. We'll be able to demonstrate it for you after the talk here. So that's what Solos glass is about first stop on the way.

Well, so actually, let's talk about what the next stop might be. So as the Metaverse is going to develop, there'll be much better communications, faster communications. There'll be access to cloud servers, edge servers. What sort of new functions for a glasses -- voice glasses solution do you see coming, like maybe instantaneous translation, for example?

Yes. So actually, John is wearing his Solos glasses. He wears them every day, all day, does all his phone calls by that. Most of the time, John doesn't carry his cellphone with him. He's got his cellular watch, and so applications like that -- again, I talked about some of the foundational applications for people. As this develops, we will [indiscernible] those types of applications and the consumable branches of those types of applications that are possible with these glasses through their computer, through their watch to have things like simultaneous translation for people speaking in different languages to be able to hear and speak to each other is [indiscernible].

Yes. I think it's important. I want to make sure to Paul that I don't become a salesperson for Solos. It sounds like a marketing principle, but the interesting about Solos -- thank you, Paul. Yes, thank you. I think the interesting thing about Solos or sound is that we try to create a universe, a sound universe. That's why you're talking about also spatial sound. It's not surround sound; it's spatial sound. It's 360 degrees sound. It's open ear; it's not stick to our ear. So all these things give you a natural experience with sound, [indiscernible] in the digital sound. You can communicate with everybody around the world. Now we have this in the display, the vision side, right? So let's talk about the vision side. Because the Metaverse is really a multiple universe created by the digital content that we have. Through Internet, you can connect to everybody in the world. Whether it's the sound, whether it's sight, you can have multi-players, multi-speakers. So the next thing is let's play into this, and I think we're supposed to put in the two things. The next thing, of course, the AR, you put augmented reality. But I think RealWear's still not here yet. The best part is deploying the augmented reality for the enterprise world, for the military world. We're very much in the military world, augmented reality. In fact, there are a lot of -- and you are here in this year. We just talked about -- we finished the sound. We go into this augmented reality now. We're going to take the vision side into the glass. Of course, at the end, we'll talk about a virtually, the fully immersive experience. But we talk about the augmented reality experience, and we're very happy. Go ahead, Chris.

Yes. Andrew Chrostowski. Andrew, please join us up here.

Do you have your system?

Yes, I do.

Yes, let's -- because it's on the livestreaming. We want to see your latest, latest hottest thing.

Yes. Could you give him a microphone, too, please?

Andrew is the CEO and Chairman of RealWear, and they just recently announced -- it's a hot product. Hi, Andrew. Thank you for coming. Could you be here so the camera can see you?

All right. Hey, welcome, everybody. Thanks for having -- sorry to be a little bit late here for CES. Now I'd like to introduce you to the RealWear Navigator 500. So I'm Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO of RealWear. And this device is the eighth generation of our wearable voice control technology. So this is a tablet computer you wear on your head where we've replaced all the touch and gesture with voice command only in a 105-decibel environment. So literally, if you have an APK, you can make a half on this device. Its focus is for industrial workers who work with their hands, I mean, frontline workers from oil rigs to manufacturing lines to doctors and surgeons in operating rooms. So wherever you can be a connected worker and get value from being connected to information, real-time collaboration, this is the device we've developed.

It's a wonderful device, and with Kopin, which is a partner, we're making the display and the optics for them. So I talk a little bit about for the Kopin. And also -- actually, the RealWear actually is a very good part for us for many, many years, as many of the people actually came from Kopin. Yes, yes.

And the problems that you're solving have been problems that have been around for a long time. I actually remember back in the mid- and late '90s, I was working with a company called Xybernaut. Do you remember Xybernaut?

I don't, but...

Belt-worn computer with a head-mounted display and a massive display out here that was -- I mean it could give you minimal functionality. Look what we can do now.

And not only can this do what it does today, but it's a modular future-proof platform. So in this device, this is a 48-megapixel camera sensor. It can be replaced by the user, and we can replace it with any other camera. So as camera technology is advanced, you can simply replace it with a different -- more powerful camera or fuse thermal-imaging cameras on our pipeline. The display and boom arm, display technology is changing all the time. This is also able to be changed at the service level. So we've really built this thing to be future-proof, so that a life cycle for an investment for an industrial partner can depend on it for 3 or 4 years and know they're going to put exactly the right product in the hands of their users based on their needs.

Yes. It's a wonderful device, great for enterprise work. Thank you very much, Andrew. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

So actually, what's kind of interesting about a product like that is the form factor. You've got this little display on a boom that provides just a small amount of information in a look-up or a look-down kind of capability. That's just one implementation of augmented reality, right? But it's all specific problems where you have information snagging or a limited amount of information. So do you think will -- actually, Andrew, come back up and answer. Come on, answer another question for us.

Yes. That's a very beautiful question.

Yes.

[indiscernible]

So tell us about the applications where this is particularly useful, this form factor and this kind of voice and power and display capabilities.

Well, our belief...

Where's his microphone here?

Thank you so much. It's so weird to do this with a mask on. You can't tell exactly what you're saying.

I know.

But I'm smiling. The applications, right? It's as diverse as you can think of in terms of how a connected worker can get value. So the primary initial use case, which thousands of our customers use, we have over 5,000 global customers. We've shipped over 55,000 of these units that are deployed. We're going way past the demonstration [indiscernible] for this activity. It starts with remote collaboration. So think of how we've worked as a hybrid work environment for the last few years. We've been working in Zoom; we've been working in Microsoft Teams, doing Cisco Webex or what have you. So today, someone has an oil rig that goes down, they can reach out. Instead of putting somebody in a car to drive to a heliport to fly them out to the rig to solve the problem, they can connect real time, solve the problem quickly, and all of that downtime turns into value for the customer. And that's true whether you're making high-speed manufacturing for food and beverage, whether you're building automobiles, all those kinds of downtime activities where you're a field technician and how many times does the technician go out somewhere, doesn't quite know how to get the information. They can pull up the manual. They can do it hands-free. They can do workflow. So anything you can think of in terms of this idea of getting information, collaborating, documenting through workflow are all applications that make a big difference in our product.

Right. So what is the field of view on these typically?

Typically, 23 degrees field of view.

23, okay.

And that's important because you think, well, it could be bigger. But you've got to understand that we're a digital second, reality first product. So think about your airline pilot. They're looking at the reality first. They're looking around any field of view. They need to see what's around them. And when they need information, he or she glances down at their instrument panel. That's what you're doing with our product. You're not living in that cognitive load environment. You're doing your work. And when you need information, you're glancing down and getting the information you need, whether it's a diagram, a work construction or what have you.

Right, right. And I think that's a really important point is you don't need to be in a completely immersive environment, a full -- a wide field of view, whether it's augmented or virtual reality, to do important jobs in the market today.

Well, I'm a huge fan of the Metaverse. And John, we both have talked about this a little bit. There is absolutely value in this idea of digitization and sort of this immersive technology. But I don't want my head stuck in the Metaverse when I'm next to dangerous equipment, when real-world consequences come from not paying attention to what you're doing. And that's where our assisted reality approach makes sense for those workers who are working with their hands in those kinds of environments. In the environment where that's not the case, absolutely, there's degrees of augmentation. That whole spectrum from reality to sort of virtual reality that we all work on, it has the right place for the right tool.

Very good, Andrew. If I could amplify that. At this Kopin [indiscernible] business model is, in fact, get the voice, algorithm, display, the optics and help everybody. We have to be inside guide. That's why I want to make sure you understand we have to have display and optics in there. And later on, we're going to talk about immersive in the same way. We develop the display, the optics, the packaging for the modules, for people use it. So we don't make the end-user system. The RealWear of the world actually go out there and market it, and he understands the market a lot better than I can, okay. Thank you again, Andrew. So we could not go more immersive now. Yes. Okay.

Yes. Great. Thank you, everyone. And should you have any questions, I'll be around to talk with you.

Right. Thanks. So I kind of see that the next step then is if it's a small field of view, glance up, glance down, information snagging, which is kind of what we're talking about here. Now you expand the field of view. You provide more SLAM kind of capabilities, provide more processing power. Do you see that as part of a valuable application?

Yes. As we mentioned, this whole thing is a continuum. You started with something. For us, we can start with the sound. Sound is all invisible. It's all around us. It's easy to handle and has a very big market already. That's how we do. The next thing we want to do is, how do we put the vision in there? I said RealWear is a good example. You put in a second monitor next to you. And when we use the second monitor, we drive around. We look at the monitor all the time. The factory has second monitor. It's iPad. But these kinds of wearable is hands-free. So this is something the consumer, the user can set right now. However, I always said that's dream. When I was young, I always liked to read books. In some way, I put myself into a fantasy world. So I would like to say, why don't we make that ultimate Metaverse glass? You put it on. You have the great sound, natural sound, like the ambient sound that you're used to. Then you see a screen, and the screen is so good you don't even know what is real, what's not real. It's a little bit scary, okay? But you want to have this very large view, extremely sharp. You put it on. You don't have to fuss around with it. It's immediate work. When I heard that far away, I think the early version -- if you look at Oculus, in some way, consumer can't set that. I should stop on that, let you ask questions.

Well, all right, if you want to talk about Oculus. You told me your grandson got an Oculus 2 for Christmas. He put it on. Tell us about his experience.

Yes. First of all, thank you to mention Chris, and now people everywhere know [indiscernible]. My grandson, 13-year-old, with my son, we actually went to vacation place. And they played this Oculus. They gave me the gift. Actually, they gave [indiscernible] the gift. So they played it for 3 days. Then I asked them a question. So what do you like about it? And what you don't like about it? They obviously like about it. They played many hours with it. So I said, what's wrong with it? It's the first thing my grandson say, I feel very dizzy. I feel dizzy, and the mother comes in, how you only play an hour, 1 hour a day. I feel dizzy. Second, he say, it was too heavy. Even he says it's too heavy. It's very interesting. It's not what they're worried about this thing sticks out. He just don't like the heaviness. The third is that images not sharp enough. It's okay for play games, but it's not real world. He knows it. It's not real world. And it -- actually to me, you also worry about latencies, and maybe that's how it caused this dizziness. So that's the thing about Metaverse. Metaverse really in the true Metaverse glass should be like our Solos glass like this. Solos glass is 130 gram, same size, same weight as your sunglass. Can we get there? You see this bar. This is why my dream is over there. There's a Metaverse glass that will at least give you like a portable IMAX theater, a personal portable IMAX theater. To this end, we actually achieved that. It took us many years. If you have time after this call, you're going to look at [ our recent ], which we call P80 with that new display, OLED display. You look into it, you say, you've got it. Not the end, you got the beginning of what I call a Metaverse glass. And this such glass will be pretty light. And thanks to Panasonic, actually. Panasonic, through their subsidiary, came out with this Metaverse glass. In fact, they take a lot of publicity on this. I think it was in Financial Time yesterday now, and they use our display, micro OLED display, and our Pancake optics. And maybe we should introduce our...

Yes. [indiscernible] Are you here? Very well.

Yes. Yes. He's the President of -- come over here.

[indiscernible] Please. [indiscernible]

Where's your set? You think you can't bring you set with you.

[indiscernible]

Yes, put the glass, sure. Go get a [indiscernible] and say, yes. I just...

Okay. While he's going to get that, let me ask you, what do you think of the requirements for, let's call it, a next-generation VR glasses solution? The technical requirements.

The technical requirement. I believe that, ultimately, that -- I think people, the consumer now, we should talk about consumer. The enterprise world and defense world, we do a lot of other things. I mean you know we are in the F-35 helmet. The helmet is $400,000, okay? It's a truly fantastic AI helmet. It sees 360 degree, night and day, okay? Night and day, 360 degrees. But I think for consumer, I think the eyeglass cannot be too heavy. I really truly believe 200 grams probably the maximum they can use, okay, for a long period. Short time, Oculus is around -- Oculus around 500 grams and 450 grams. I do believe my grandson is correct. Second is visibility. If it's true Metaverse, you want to see image that you cannot tell. Is it still [indiscernible], it's 3D, but you can look at it if matte finish. You cannot see any grains. We're almost there. However, the image is only for 150-inch screen. Eventually, you want to get bigger and bigger screen, like an IMAX theater. But you cannot [ make a fake ] with grainy -- graininess in the screen. I think a lot of people are trying to make it big, but the image is grainy, just like the early days of projection TV. They're big plus ugly. Nobody buys them. Nobody buys them. [indiscernible], right? So same thing with 3D. You pick another glass. It's really easy. With this [indiscernible] automatic in 3D. Automatically, the display should be very high resolution. Ours is 2.6 by 2.6. I didn't want to go too big image, 150-inch. That you can see a matte finish. You cannot tell. You go in there. [ Does this one ] go higher, we had to go higher resolution. I think the idea is you need about 4K by 4K on each eye. Then you get about 8K in the [indiscernible].

Well, we'll talk about that more. That's a marketing thing. I want to come back to that.

I'm sure you want to come back that.

Yes, yes. [indiscernible], you want to come up?

Yes, you get the unit now. This is the Panasonic one. They just announced, I think, 2 days ago. They're using the 2.6K by 2.6K micro OLED, and they use Pancake optics. These are all plastic Pancake optics now. And it's only -- it's quite very light now, right?

Yes. Quite very light. It's the [indiscernible], 250 grams only. Quite lightweight.

I tried it. It's quite comfortable.

It's comfortable.

Oculus is 450.

450 or 460. And it has the diopter adjuster function right now. So the [indiscernible], it's nothing to use eyeglass. And quite comfortable to use long, long hours because I spend -- some day, I spend over 6 hours or 10 hours in the Metaverse right now.

He's young.

So -- but [indiscernible] maybe you guys spend so long time in the Metaverse. You guys already using a smartphone every day, sometimes Sunday or Saturday. Or your sons using the smartphone 4 hours, 5 hours, even 6 hours.

That's true.

Like PS5, maybe your son spend a time. Long, long time in the PS5, right?

His mother would not allow it. Go ahead. It is the latest, the hardest you mentioned right now.

Yes, we're going to launch this product in this spring. Our pricing is around the $900, so purely focusing to the heavy users of the Metaverse. The low end, the [indiscernible] company will be just touch the market, but the Metaverse is quite spread out, so we're going to -- maybe the high-end customers have a different type of use case. So we are hooked into the wires because heavy [indiscernible] users [indiscernible] long time, so no need to use battery. And also we removed the battery even to make it much more lighter.

Right. Okay. So there's diopter adjustment for each eye, and there's an IPD adjustment?

Yes, of course. You can change...

And this one gives about 250-inch screen TV, right? The FOV can be around 250, which is very large, 250. How many people has 250-inch screen?

Like that needs at least half of the room, right?

So what are the applications you see for the first use of this?

First use of the glass application is VRChat.

VR...

VRChat. It's most biggest -- VR-based Metaverse service.

Interesting. Okay.

They are still the small company but the quite high speed leading up, so...

Okay. Well, then that is kind of a long use application. I would suspect then. All right.

Yes.

Interesting. And how about games? Do you see that as a Metaverse...

Metaverse means that you can do gaming in the Metaverse. So the Metaverse and the gaming is not the different dimension. It's a completely different dimension because once you go into the Metaverse, you can do the Metaverse. It's same as the real. So you can -- the gaming in the real, right? The tables or you can join the top game or chess game, whatever. It's same as, so once you go into the Metaverse, you can enjoy the game. So of course, the glasses can be used for game.

Okay. Okay. Available in just Japan or...

Of course, maybe we're going to start from Japan, but quickly practice the business in West.

Okay. And what's on your road map? What's next after this?

That's a secret but, of course, much more lighter. They're much more comfortable. And also the no wires.

No wires. Okay. So would you think, Wi-Fi 6 or 5G, what's the best way to connect to the source?

That's quite a good question. So Wi-Fi 6 is better for our use case because our customers are Metaverse, high Metaverse customers. But sometimes, 5G is quite good but related with the cloud-based rendering. So the -- because a PC-based Metaverse is so beautiful. It's a good experience, like a 20 -- 250-inch TV experience. Well, of course, in the future, you'd like -- everyone would like to enjoy the good Metaverse in outside, so -- but the processors -- smartphone processors are raising, upgrading, updated every year, but the PC processor is also raising a bit every year, so the breakpoint needs a super high-power computer on the cloud and rendering on the cloud, beautiful...

Which would be better for 5G from -- yes.

For 5G. That is the one in the future.

Right. Yes, especially industrial applications where they can set up very high-bandwidth 5G networks, right? Yes, especially millimeter wave. I want to see millimeter wave.

I think we should try that one. Now I'm done. No, I'm not.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you.

It's very interesting, and I really think I really enjoyed that Panasonic is [indiscernible] doing. Panasonic actually is [indiscernible] for this Metaverse glass for about 4 years. We try to develop the display, try develop the Pancake optics. But when they're getting close to the product, they actually move into a subsidiary, which is fully owned, run by very young people. He's the president and pushed this product out. He understand the consumer, the use case. And that has given me a lot of confidence when big companies can run like that. Yes. They say, okay, it's ready. The first round, let the young people push it up. And you can see it. I mean he's obviously one of the youngest people in this room, and there he is. He's running. So I think there's a lot of future, but the real Metaverse glass is still some time away. Remember, not only sound, not only voice, but you have touch and other stuff. And you have to get an image maybe bigger than 250 inch . Maybe you want to get a 400-inch screen, something like that, and that's where there's another challenge going on.

Right.

Okay. Continue. I'm sorry.

Okay. Well, let's come back to the marketing question, right? So for example, some Metaverse glasses, people will say, well, we have an 8K display, but it really means it's two 4K by 4K displays, which is not really 8K. So we have a marketing problem here. Do we need to have the marketing police talk about the resolutions? Or is pixels per degree really the right way to evaluate?

It's a very good question. Maybe it's a good time for me to introduce Chris again. He is the Executive Director of the 8K Association. He's very sensitive to the word 8K. So when we mentioned 8K, he's getting bent out of shape. Okay. So it is true. As you well know, there's a big debate in the size area, engineering versus the marketing area. Now you can look at the 8K TV, your two eyes working looking at one screen. So this is 8K. Nobody debate with that. Now you have two 4K TV down your eyes. Now, each one is in one eye. What this is? Is this the 8K? Because it's two screen, right? Two eyes see it in two screen. So the big question in the military for a long time, what do you really have? We know it's more than 4K. Each one is 4K, 4K. But is it really just added up, become 8K or is somewhere in between? So Chris and I argue about this, right? The marketing guys on this VR glass is going to add up. So two 4K one automatically become 8K. If this is true or not, we don't know. The studies done by the military, they're thinking somewhere in between, maybe a square of 2.

Yes. And that's for a stereoscopic image.

That's right. Yes.

Right. Now, suppose you start to add multiplanar images, start to go with the light field displays, how do you measure resolution? What does the resolution even -- is that definable at that point?

So what Chris is saying, it's just like TV now. I always think 4K TV is good enough. Now, of course, they add this association 8K. I tried to buy 4K TV last month. It's not for Christmas. They asked me to stop. It's a few months. The 8K TVs, why you want to get yourself outdated? So I think the real true VR Metaverse glass is going to be a continuum. Continuum -- it'll be just like cellphone. Each generation comes out better, higher resolution, bigger screen, lower weight, higher performance. And it's going to last for a while. The cell -- the real cellphone, I think, the tipping point with the iPhone was at '19, 2005?

No, like '13, maybe?

'13. So yes, it's about 8 years. And now it's almost -- I think it's good enough. That probably would not change every 3 years maybe, every 3 years. So I think the Metaverse glass -- I think the Panasonic one is this -- a wonderful one. And I think if people will buy, if people use it, the high-end people gain more, they can always drive the technology. But really, every year, every 18 months, it will be new one, new one, new one. What we try to do is give them better optics, finer optics, bigger view and better display to enable all the people to make up the best VR glasses. We'll also make display for military, the augmented one. Different optics, and we will offer RealWear. And we also do other that involve more the sound. They want to give you the sound. There will be some of the people here I know that the last couple of days talking to me. And some of the ambition is shocking, right? They wanted us to do the display maybe, some optics maybe. But I think the Metaverse world is a continuum, and it's multifaceted. There's no simple answer. And everybody said, yes, we have digital trends you're talking about. The usual, of course, the camera, you can take care of this to everything that's digital. But that's still not Metaverse. That's just give you a static digital image. There's no sound. It's not moving part. And a lot of people go crazy about digital trends, which is good, but it's just a very small part of this journey.

Yes. So we're actually running out of time.

We do?

Yes, we're running out of time. So let me kind of maybe sum up maybe what I think I've heard. I think Kopin and your partners are focused on applications that solve real-world problems, that you want to add augmentation where it adds value, where it solves specific problems and not create solutions that are maybe in search of problems to solve. It's easier to pick out a simple problem and add one technology than to try and add 30 technologies and solve every problem. I think that's kind of your philosophy, but you tell me.

Yes, it's a very good question. I mean if you look at the journey, today is a journey. If every time you should walk around, you started with display. Then we have a lot of military. You can see guns. You're going to see helmets. So we are actually in all the defense systems using AR, VR, training. So that area, we pretty much dominate it now. So the next thing we try to do is to have all the enterprise well. RealWear is a great example, okay? So these are all Metaverse. That combination of digital world and physical well depends on how much you interface them. And we work with Solos to change the whole thing on the glasses, on the audio glasses. But my ultimate dream is different. I think can we put altogether, put a glass on, and my son -- my grandson say, voila, this is what I want. What is that? I hope that I get it there before he becomes adult. So we finance 3, 4 to 5 years to get to there. But I think the Panasonic is a big step. I really think Panasonic did a good start, so we have something now that's only 200-some grams. Remember, I want some of these less than 200 gram. He say they -- next year, maybe, you'll get there, 200 grams. That is very many grams lighter than the Oculus 2 who actually sold around 10 million units in the last 24 months. It is not a small thing. They sold 10 million units. Then there are people here want to give us -- they say, can you give us something like two 500-inch of screen. Yes, give us 3 years. We wanted the display instead of 2.6, we can go to 4K, 4K by 4K. So I can combine them and got to tell Chris, Chris, I have an 8K.

Fine. Let's stop there. Thank you all for joining us tonight.

Okay. Just a quick question.

Yes.

Well, if we're running out of time, it's -- otherwise, we can talk about afterwards. Yes.

You have the Whisper technology, you got the sound, now you've got half the weight and the best visual. Where do we go from here?

I think the sound [ tie ] is a very good point. I think the next thing is the sound is, let's face it. When we've solved that, we want to solve the hearing part. So we want to make the sunglass into hearing glass. It's a personalization. So everybody say, I hear them say I want more bass. Or some people, older people or some people have more hearing challenge. It will be -- the sunglass will turn into a hearing glass using digital things. On the VR side -- on AR side, I really believe -- I think that I think we were already going there. This augmented reality, it had to be -- the [indiscernible] had to be smaller, lighter and a better image and then maybe a little bit easier to view. And that part, I think, is very close. Maybe 1 or 2 years we'll get there. The VR side, I think, the Panasonic [indiscernible] sound set is very good. Let's keep it below 200 gram, [indiscernible] my grandson and our son going to get easy, and they use our 4K TV or our 8K TV if I divide. And that's only a couple of years away. And we are behind the scene. The reason a lot of people don't know about Kopin is if you walk through it, you have military systems, AR systems, enterprise systems, now consumer systems, we're actually all in there. All the companies basically [indiscernible] for us. So it's time for us. I think this is one thing to say. We actually did a lot of good stuff for people. And we just want to say, we are inside [indiscernible] systems that you guys are using. And then again, you have a very interesting system. We want to hear about it, and we're going to help you.

Great. Thank you. All right. Good job. Don't do that.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks, guys.

Thank you very much, Chris. It's the 8K guy. You want to buy 8K TV, talk to him.

Thanks.