BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rain Technology, creator of the world’s most advanced directional display technologies, today announced the availability of OLED Switchable Privacy™ ahead of Mobile World Congress, running Oct. 8-10, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Designed for mobile device brands, tier one manufacturers, and their suppliers, Switchable Privacy is built into the display of mobile devices to protect enterprises and consumers against visual hackers and snoopers and the threat of fraud. This patented technology will now be available for the first time for OLED displays and has already shipped in millions of LCD laptop and POS displays to date.
Data privacy is a fundamental human right, supported by legislation like HIPAA, PCI or consumer protection. While enterprises prioritize fraud prevention, data security, and IT policy, consumers prioritize visual security, identity safety, and data privacy. Complementing these efforts, OLED Switchable Privacy is embedded in the display panel of any device (mobile, tablet, laptop), directing and controlling light from the display, thus allowing enterprises, consumers and application developers to hone unprecedented levels of automated visual security.
“Imagine a world where software can control the visual privacy of your mobile phone, just like GPS or camera functions — putting a powerful new privacy utility in the hands of consumers, developers and IT departments,” declared Robert Ramsey, CEO of Rain Technology. “This is the world enabled by Rain’s Switchable Privacy technology, a built-in display alternative to the billions of dollars spent on privacy screen protectors and with significant advantages in the quality of privacy, durability, brightness, touch, and most obviously, the ability to switch back to share mode when private information isn’t being displayed.”
OLED displays provide excellent image quality with brighter colors, faster motion, and higher contrast than LCDs and, therefore, have been widely adopted in devices including laptops, televisions, point of sale devices, tablets and automotives. OLED is generally considered a premium display technology and accordingly is priced higher than LCDs. When a consumer shops for high-end trim levels of automotives or high-specification laptops, tablets, monitors or televisions, OLED is usually the technology found in the displays of these premium models. In particular, OLED has seen the greatest unit adoption in the area of mobile phones, especially the premium segment, including the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy series.
With the ubiquity of OLED in mobile, OLED Switchable Privacy represents an impressive breakthrough in display technology for the mobile segment. To date, Switchable Privacy has been unavailable to the manufacturers of mobile phones and other OLED devices due to the challenges of controlling the significantly greater field of view from OLED displays versus LCD. OLED Switchable Privacy makes customer information and digital interactions more private and more secure, in addition to putting this power in every individual’s hands. Switchable Privacy’s availability for OLED brings a desired premium feature to the preferred display technology for the best mobile devices on the market.
In the U.S., identity theft alone accounted for over $10 billion of losses in 2023 and is expected to grow at 14% annually. The aftermarket for privacy screens is more than $1 billion and is expected to double over the next five years. However, there are notable drawbacks to the aftermarket privacy film approach, including reduction of light, permanent limitation of viewing angle, inability to use camera features, reduced touch sensitivity, challenges sharing content or collaborating with others, and challenges with QR or barcode scanning. Stick-on privacy screens do not have the durability of a built-in solution and also can have problems with installation and removal including the appearance of bubbles, off-center installation, and problems with adhesive removal.
The benefits of an electronically Switchable Privacy solution are many, impacting consumers, enterprises and developers.
Rain Technology holds the patent for creating a thin, embedded proprietary layer within the OLED display module of a display screen. The patented approach is focused on directing and controlling the light coming out of the display, allowing for privacy to be switched on and off. The design parameters are determined during panel manufacturing and activated by a hardware or software trigger, electronically switching a display from share mode to privacy mode, controlling the viewing angle. This switching can occur in under a millisecond and can be activated manually or automatically through software. The technology can enable as little as 0.3% screen visibility from a 45° viewing angle. The approach is compatible with OLED, LCD, mini-LED and micro-LED displays.
Specifically, Rain Technology’s OLED Switchable Privacy solution is based upon its prior success and intellectual property with its LCD solution. OLED is an organic light-emitting diode, in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is an organic compound film that emits light in response to an electric current. This means that each pixel is controlled individually and emits its own light, unlike LCDs where the light comes from a backlighting element. Rain Technology has adapted its LCD technology to OLED by focusing on controlling this additional light, utilizing proprietary LCD technology and polarization techniques.
Demonstrations of the technology will be provided upon request. For more information on OLED Switchable Privacy solutions from Rain Technology, please visit www.raintechnology.com/switchable-e-privacy.
The article / news was originally published on businesswire
October 01, 2024 09:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time
