“Could upcoming Apple products feature a futuristic material from an Orange County company? The inclusion of a super-strong alloy invented by Rancho Santa Margarita-based Liquidmetal Technologies in future Apple products has been speculated for more than two years since the company entered into an exclusive and perpetual agreement with the Cupertino-based gadget maker,” Ian Hamilton reports for The Orange County Register. “The exclusive deal in consumer electronics was revealed through an SEC filing in August 2010, catching the eyes of Apple-focused bloggers and news sites who have continually speculated about the inclusion of the technology in upcoming gadgets.”
“Liquidmetal Technologies came out of research at the California Institute of Technology. The technology involves mixing certain elements and then heating and cooling them under very specific conditions to give them a desired structure at the atomic level. This structure is more like glass than metal and results in superior strength, hardness, elasticity as well as resistance to corrosion and wear,” Hamilton reports. “Liquidmetal’s alloy, a combination of mostly zirconium and titanium, ends up being twice as strong as titanium while being able to be molded into shape during production like plastics.”
Hamilton reports, “On the date of the agreement with Apple on Aug. 5, 2010, however, the company paid off nearly $11 million in debt, turned its business into a licensing and partnership operation and brought on a new CEO, Thomas W. Steipp. The total amount Apple paid has not been made public… Steipp suggests the industry for these new alloys is still in its infancy and points to ongoing research at universities into similar alloys as proof there is a bright future for the technology. Liquidmetal makes bold claims about its technology, suggesting it is the third revolution in material sciences following steel and plastics… For a company like Apple, Liquidmetal could mean thinner, lighter parts that are stronger than if they were made with existing materials. That could mean more room for components inside a device or smaller, lighter gadgets overall.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
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We keep hearing about thinner, lighter, and sometimes scratch resistant.
We rarely hear about the main benefit. With Liquidmetal injection molding, Apple could make unibody products without the thousands of CNC machines they now have machining and finishing aluminum parts.
You can’t underestimate the impact of that. Potentially they could crank out high quality MacBooks and iPhones as easily as others now crank out their crappy products.
What about the reception of radio signals through liquid metal? Could the iPhone’s telephone and wifi antennas receive signals through LM?
I actually bought some stock as a long-term (mini) investment. If this takes off for real, I could see the stock going nuts, so it might be a nice little profit a few years down the road. Fingers crossed!
me 2!
Me 3.
Me 4!!
This article is another Liquidmetal wet dream.
The term “gadget maker” makes me cringe. Probably because it describes Apple as opposed Apple Computer.
Tired of hearing about Liquidmetal iPhones. A Liquidmetal SIM carrier doesn’t count for sh*t. By the time Apple starts using Liquidmetal, every Android smartphone vendor will have it. I hope Apple figures a way to use it in some advanced battery design to get 20% more life out of their batteries. Apparently, Apple is going to forever continue on this thinness kick. Apple must be trying to save metal over the spread of 50 million iPhones. Forget super-thin and increase battery life.
Apparently you have not mastered the fine art of reading.
“the company entered into an exclusive and perpetual agreement with the Cupertino-based gadget maker,” Ian Hamilton reports for The Orange County Register. “The exclusive deal in consumer electronics”
So either you can’t read or you think Android phones aren’t consumer electronic devices. Is yours made of wood and string?
Laughing boy is a Troll, this individual has been posting Anti Apple propaganda for the past month.
Just ignore it.
But it’s great comedy relief!
Liquidmetal, zirconium and titanium, dense, hard, tough, heavy, probably poor conductor if used as case material, should be good for larger electronics like iPad, MBA or MBP.
I don’t know about the iPhone. If the antennas are all external it should work.
Real artists SHIP.
Wake me up when it’s actually a large part of an Apple product.
And you took that quote out of context.
Next time before you post, do some research so you don’t appear to be more of a idiot then you are.
Somewhere along the line I heard that a liquidmetal iphone case would cost in the neighborhood of $100 each to manufacture… at that cost they won’t be making a LQMT case this time around. But with some advancements, and counting out the cost of the expensive CNC machines that would not be necessary… maybe. It would be awesome. Especially for the stock LQMT.
If Liquidmetal is used in someway don’t cry and say you didn’t get any warning, most people are completely in the dark, like most people still are in the dark about how big AAPL will get. The family of Liquidmetal alloy’s will used in the future in many different products the only question is how wide spread will its use be and where.
Liquidmetal would make an excellent bike frame building material. Lightweight, stiff, and strong.
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