Corning Official Throws A Curve Into Speculation About Apple’s iWatch
by Brent Dirks
February 28, 2013
The president of Corning Glass Technologies, which makes Gorilla Glass for iOS products, has thrown a big curve into speculation about what Apple's rumored iWatch might look like.
In an interview with Bloomberg today, James Clappin said it will be at least three years before products with the company’s Willow Glass will hit the market.
When the glass was originally announced last summer, Corning expected to see products leveraging the technology sometime in 2013. But companies have yet to come up with products that take advantage of the glass:
“People are not accustomed to glass you roll up,” Clappin said after an event marking the opening an $800 million factory for liquid-crystal-display glass. “The ability of people to take it and use it to make a product is limited.” The Corning, New York-based company is producing the glass and making “a lot of effort” to teach “very big name” customers how to handle the spools, Clappin said, declining to elaborate.The New York Times said specifically, in a story published earlier in the month, that the iWatch would "stand apart from competitors based on the company's understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body." In another report, Bloomberg said that there are more than 100 people assigned to the iWatch team, which if true, easily shows that the idea is beyond the experimentation phase. A recent Apple patent application uncovered last week also added fuel to the bendable display speculation. The application details a watch-like device made of a single piece of material that wraps around a user's wrist. Are you disappointed that the iWatch, if it really does hit the market this year, probably won't look like the pictured curved glass concept? Photo: iWatch concept by Yrving Torrealba