Beyond Gorilla Glass we find another advanced glass technology that Corning has created with the mobile market in mind: Willow Glass. The defining feature of Willow Glass is that it’s extremely flexible.
Willow Glass in action. Source: Corning PR.
The main appeal most tech observers have focused in on with Willow Glass is using its thinness and flexibility in “novel” ways on devices such as smartphones and tablets. However, the New York Times report focuses on Apple as using the glass as a solution to wearable computing:
“Such a watch would operate Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.”
The report goes on to flesh out Corning’s Willow Glass as the technology allowing the development of Apple’s watch-like device. While there are competing flexible glass covers, Corning has begun creating the capacity to roll out enough Willow Glass production that devices based on the technology can start hitting the market at the beginning of 2014.
As we’ve seen from recent supply constraint issues with the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini, a prerequisite for Apple to use a new technology is to make sure suppliers have enough capacity to fulfill the massive demand for its new products.
Even more growth opportunities ahead
The important point to make with reports of any new Apple product is that they might never see the light of day. Apple tests a variety of products, and not all of them hit the store shelves. In recent years we’ve seen reports that Apple TVs and larger iPhones were being tested, but none has made it past the conceptual level.
Yet what’s fascinating is that all of these reports feed into Apple’s continued exploration of a larger trend: Extend iOS into new devices that all reinforce each other. A wearable computer using iOS would logically be heavily integrated with both iPhones and iPads. Apple’s fascination with wearable computing stems from existing devices that are at the vanguard of this trend. As the New York Times article notes, Tim Cook has been spotted wearing NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE)‘s fuel-band device, which tracks fitness levels.
As the owner of iOS, Apple could extend the integration between wearable computing and smartphones and tablets much further than the likes of Nike could today.
Beyond wearable computing, the trend further extends into the living room. A television running iOS would be a massive leap forward from today’s clunky television user interfaces. Not only that, but iOS, through iTunes, has become the leading media platform. An Apple television as a fixed complement to all of Apple’s mobile opportunities– iPods, iPads, iPhones, and future wearable computing — makes too much sense to never happen.
