We had been hearing that Apple may be planning to use liquidmetal alloy in its upcoming iPhone 5, however later indications have shown that iPhone 5 will not be using it. Nonetheless, Apple still seems to have some use of the said alloy in mind since after having enjoyed exclusive rights to liquidmetal for some time, the company has now filed to have these rights extended for another two years.
Liquidmetal has great potential and if available in sufficient amounts, it can prove to a very useful material in creating a number of consumer products. However, currently the alloy can’t be used extensively because it has yield problems. This is precisely why so far, Apple has used it only in a SIM ejector tool for iPhone 3G.
The SIM ejector tool was probably a way devised by Apple to test the alloy and see how well it works. It now seems that Apple sees some promise to this allow since it has now filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it wants rights to the alloy for another two years.
The rights can be enacted only by the agreement of both parties. And the creators of liquidmetal are already collaborating Apple since Apple contributed some $20 million to Liquidmetal subsidiary, Crucible Intellectual Property back in August 2010. Under the terms of this agreement which was reached in 2010, Apple was to hold exclusive perpetual rights to the alloy.
It is quite natural that Apple wouldn’t have filed to have this right extended if it didn’t have plans of using the alloy in its future products. So we can quite surely expect liquidmetal to make its presence known in some Apple products next year.
Source: Scribd
Courtesy: Apple Insider
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