Maria: How is NEXT’s strategy evolving?
Ulf: In January 2025, we unveiled our plan to evolve NEXT’s patented technology to enable full-screen biometric authentication in the smartphone industry. This is a long-sought-after innovation and a plan that has been in motion since I joined the company in 2021.
As we worked to scale our leading FAP 20 size sensor to answer market demand for FAP 30, we asked ourselves a question – could this scale to the size of a smartphone display?
When we updated shareholders last January, we were confident in the theory. One year later we have two patents granted in the US and a vastly experienced partner working alongside us to make this a reality.
Importantly, this strategic move is happening in parallel with our existing product lines as we work to strengthen authentication globally.
Maria: What makes mobile an opportunity for NEXT?
Ulf: We see long-term market potential here. We noted in the recent news update that the premium smartphone market comprised 25% of the total market in 2024 and, in H1 2025, unit sales grew by 8% year on year, reaching the highest-ever mark for a first half. Conservatively, that’s 300 million premium smartphones shipped annually that need to integrate the latest features to remain competitive.
Thinking longer-term, we consider the entire smartphone market to be addressable by this technology, when it is proven in premium devices.
Maria: What makes NEXT a good fit for smartphones?
Ulf: I’ll split this into two main areas, our technology and our people.
Firstly, our Active Thermal technology is proven and works in a similar way to a touchscreen display. What’s more, this innovation can maintain or increase the security of the device and its services, while enhancing the user experience and opening the door to new use cases.
Separately, our team has the experience and expertise to bring this innovation to market. It has been a strategic priority for me to actively prepare for this move. More than 20% of our team now have knowledge and experience from directly working with or within the smartphone industry. I myself lived in South Korea for a number of years and had extensive dealings with both of the country’s main smartphone makers. Elsewhere, our team have lived and breathed display technology over the last 20 years, positioning us perfectly to seize this new opportunity.
One final point. This opportunity is commercially different for NEXT and could result in an IP licensing model. We have the recipe. We are securing the patents. We are collaborating on the demonstration unit and there is large total addressable market. This is a new way of working, but one that could be impactful for the company and shareholders.
Maria: Where are we now?
Ulf: We have been extremely active in the background over the past year and we can now mark some key milestones.
Firstly, we now have two granted US patents. We announced the first patent to our community as it is a major milestone on this journey. As we continue to secure further patents in the US and globally, we will not announce each one. Instead, we will keep our focus on progress and achieving the next major milestones. The important piece here, though, is that these patents are the building blocks of the business model – we are working to own the IP so that we can scale across a complex ecosystem.
Our latest major milestone is the selection of our display partner. On 14 January this year we announced that we have finalized an extensive process to select a display partner for the development of Anywhere-on-display authentication. NEXT and Giantplus Technology Co., Ltd. (Giantplus), a renowned Taiwan based company, will co-develop the first prototype and we see this as a strong endorsement of our technology and strategy.
Giantplus specializes in high-quality, reliable and customizable small and medium sized (Thin-Film Transistor) TFT-LCD displays. We selected Giantplus as they share our vision for the potential of this technology, their commitment to collaborate on co-development of the and their technical expertise. And we mean true collaboration – NEXT’s ongoing investment will be limited to the time of our people which is covered by our current budgets. Giantplus is bringing their expertise, scale and funding to collaboratively drive the project forward.
Their focus on TFT technology (as opposed to OLED or other display technologies) is less relevant. Display technologies are constantly changing, which is why we have made our technology and IP agnostic and able to integrate with TFT, OLED and any of the new generations of smartphone displays that are gaining momentum. In this sense, we are future-proofed and agile to different and changing requirements.
Maria: What comes next?
Ulf: We have now entered a period of co-development with Giantplus on the display demonstration unit with an ambition to showcase the prototype at Mobile World Congress 2027 in Barcelona.
As ever, we thank our team and shareholders for coming with us on this journey. And we ask our ecosystem to bear with us over the coming months. We will share updates, but these will be confined to the major milestones rather than on incremental progress.
This is, in part, to enable our team to maintain their focus on achieving our ambitious objectives, but also to remain cautious in this highly competitive market.
One final thought – we have already registered significant interest from around the industry and are working hard to drive this momentum in mobile and make this bold strategic initiative a reality for NEXT, our team, our shareholders and the mobile industry.
Watch this space!