Thanks for the input…I’ve never considered Apple to be a competitator…they are more like a co-conspirator in that we both have spent tens or hundreds of millions on the technology and apparently both can keep our mouths shut. Their technology is both wide and deep. It would be extremely positive for Apple to build a mid-frame or a watch or anything from BMG, not announce it and let a third party discover that it’s BMG. The mystery and secrecy would be worth tens of millions even if we received not a cent.
A little about trade secrets (I worked for a company for 35 years that patented almost nothing but still controlled their technology). So it’s easy to expound…..
When I first looked at BMG moulding, I assumed the dies were made of tool steel because that is the typical material used in that industry….several years later, I saw a reference to the dies being made from copper and I gave it some thought….things like copper is easy to machine, copper has much better heat transfer properties (for heating and cooling—-> relating to cycle time/throughput etc. so I could rationalize why copper was good. HOWEVER copper has flaws…it’s soft, its dimensional change with heat is large and it corrodes so maybe it isn’t ideal.
I then considered that perhaps the copper in the literature wasn’t pure copper…they were referring to a copper alloy that was harder, resistant to corrosion and dimensionally stable while still being an excellent heat conductor. So I went looking for copper alloy moulding dies and guess what? There are moulding dies made from Zinc/Copper/Magnesium manufactured where?…China. Now we have a potentially patented (or not) technology, only loosely related to BMG (probably never stated specifically) that is critical to BMG manufacture to achieve high throughput (cycle time reductions) and quality product. It’s a trade secret and it’s hidden. Multiply this by 10 or 20 and that becomes the technology moat.
Dick Chaney split knowledge into 4 quadrants and this falls into the category of…” We don’t know what we don’t know.”
Just weaving smoke…I continue to be long.
