Patently Apple first talked about a possible Apple headset or advanced-vision system using Micro-LED as far back as February 2016. On May 24 we posted a report titled "Interest in Micro-LED Displays is Exploding as Test Runs are Reportedly Scheduled by Apple in 2017 and Others in 2018." In an earlier report that month we also reported that Samsung was seeking to join the Micro-LED display race with a new Micro-LED acquisition. Facebook had acquired a Micro-LED company as well. The trend is that those who are interested in headsets are gravitating toward this kind of display. It's a display that is power efficient using only 10% of what another kind of display like LCD would use which would extend game play or general usage as an accessory for say an iPad or iPhone.

Now a new report out of Japan claims that Apple plans micro-LED displays for wearables, exactly what we reported on many moons ago. The difference of course is that the Nikkei has "industry sources" telling them it's so.

According to the report, "Apple is planning to adopt advanced micro-LED display technology in its wearable devices, industry sources say, with one suggesting that could happen as soon as 2018.  

The source went so far as to say that "Apple is working very hard to foster the micro-LED technology and that the company could push the use of new display tech as early as next year. At this point, Apple is the only company who is able to roll out micro-LED, a technology that is still at an early stage of development, and cover the high costs incurred by the low yield rate.'

One of Apple's key facilities dedicated to the development of micro-LED technology is in the Longtan district in the northern Taiwanese city of Taoyuan, the person added.

Another executive working within the Apple supply chain confirmed that Apple will be adopting micro-LED for wearables, although he could not say when.

The key affiliates of Key iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, or known as Foxconn Technology Group, invested in an American micro-LED startup eLux this past May.

In the end it's great that more publications Like the Nikkei are catching on to a trend that we've been covering for over sixteen months now. Very litte was new other than an "industry source" is telling them it's coming. You read the full report here.

The encouraging news about a possible headset from Apple was given life when they introduced Augmented Reality at their WWDC event on Monday. This was a game changer development unfolding.

A demo by Peter Jackson's new AR content company called Wingnut AR showed how an AR game could play merging a household table and an iPad. The augmented reality based game was nothing short of mind blowing. It was all created using an advanced version of Apple's new ARKit for developers.

Yet realistically, who wants to hold up an iPad for hours playing the game when it could be projected to a nice relaxing headset. Ah, and now we begin to understand how this could unfold.

In another development we reported last weekend Apple was granted a design patent for Siri logos in two styles. Apple also upgraded their international patent claims to include "Smartglasses."

Earlier this year in a second update to their headset patent, Apple specifically added that the headset would be available in two viewing modes. There would be normal and close-up modes. The second mode was for augmented reality. Apple noted that the second mode occurs "when the cellular telephone is connected to a head-mounted device."

Later the patent states: "wherein the processor is configured to overlay the captured image over a portion of the image based content in the second mode," which of course is describing augmented reality.

In April TSMC hinted that 7nm processor would be in volume by 2018 that would support "new and innovative features for smartphones including VR, AR, context-aware computation, AI" and more. So a headset could definitely be on tap once 7nm chips are made available supporting AR. Most definitely, interesting times are ahead.

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