Alternative to Privacy Screen Protectors Improves Security and Utility

Rain Technology, creator of the world’s most advanced directional display technologies, today announced the availability of OLED Switchable Privacy™ ahead of Mobile World Congress, running Oct. 8-10, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Designed for mobile device brands, tier one manufacturers, and their suppliers, Switchable Privacy is built into the display of mobile devices to protect enterprises and consumers against visual hackers and snoopers and the threat of fraud. This patented technology will now be available for the first time for OLED displays and has already shipped in millions of LCD laptop and POS displays to date.

Data privacy is a fundamental human right, supported by legislation like HIPAA, PCI or consumer protection. While enterprises prioritize fraud prevention, data security, and IT policy, consumers prioritize visual security, identity safety, and data privacy. Complementing these efforts, OLED Switchable Privacy is embedded in the display panel of any device (mobile, tablet, laptop), directing and controlling light from the display, thus allowing enterprises, consumers and application developers to hone unprecedented levels of automated visual security.

“Imagine a world where software can control the visual privacy of your mobile phone, just like GPS or camera functions — putting a powerful new privacy utility in the hands of consumers, developers and IT departments,” declared Robert Ramsey, CEO of Rain Technology. “This is the world enabled by Rain’s Switchable Privacy technology, a built-in display alternative to the billions of dollars spent on privacy screen protectors and with significant advantages in the quality of privacy, durability, brightness, touch, and most obviously, the ability to switch back to share mode when private information isn’t being displayed.”

State of OLED: Imperatives for Mobile Phones, Laptops and Automotives

OLED displays provide excellent image quality with brighter colors, faster motion, and higher contrast than LCDs and, therefore, have been widely adopted in devices including laptops, televisions, point of sale devices, tablets and automotives. OLED is generally considered a premium display technology and accordingly is priced higher than LCDs. When a consumer shops for high-end trim levels of automotives or high-specification laptops, tablets, monitors or televisions, OLED is usually the technology found in the displays of these premium models. In particular, OLED has seen the greatest unit adoption in the area of mobile phones, especially the premium segment, including the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy series.

With the ubiquity of OLED in mobile, OLED Switchable Privacy represents an impressive breakthrough in display technology for the mobile segment. To date, Switchable Privacy has been unavailable to the manufacturers of mobile phones and other OLED devices due to the challenges of controlling the significantly greater field of view from OLED displays versus LCD. OLED Switchable Privacy makes customer information and digital interactions more private and more secure, in addition to putting this power in every individual’s hands. Switchable Privacy’s availability for OLED brings a desired premium feature to the preferred display technology for the best mobile devices on the market.

State of Mobile Privacy: Imperatives for Enterprises and Consumers

In the U.S., identity theft alone accounted for over $10 billion of losses in 2023 and is expected to grow at 14% annually. The aftermarket for privacy screens is more than $1 billion and is expected to double over the next five years. However, there are notable drawbacks to the aftermarket privacy film approach, including reduction of light, permanent limitation of viewing angle, inability to use camera features, reduced touch sensitivity, challenges sharing content or collaborating with others, and challenges with QR or barcode scanning. Stick-on privacy screens do not have the durability of a built-in solution and also can have problems with installation and removal including the appearance of bubbles, off-center installation, and problems with adhesive removal.

The benefits of an electronically Switchable Privacy solution are many, impacting consumers, enterprises and developers.

• For consumers, it is imperative to protect personal privacy and confidential information. OLED Switchable Privacy provides automated or voluntary privacy mechanisms that can be utilized to protect against snoopers and identity theft and also to secure private mobile interactions in public places from social to messaging to gaming to content consumption.

• For enterprise IT, it is imperative to protect confidential information and ensure regulatory compliance in addition to decreasing the reliance upon employees themselves to be proactive around information security. OLED Switchable Privacy provides an automated privacy enforcement mechanism that can be utilized by enterprises across both internal and third-party applications to secure confidential information. Driven by IT policy, Switchable Privacy complements cybersecurity by protecting against threats to information security in the physical environment, wherever the employee may be working.

• For developers, OLED Switchable Privacy offers new possibilities to safeguard user privacy while utilizing mobile applications from social to gaming to banking. Whenever sensitive content or private information is displayed or entered, developers will have the ability to enforce or offer privacy protection to users, building privacy into the fabric of the mobile application experience.

Technology Breakthrough

Rain Technology holds the patent for creating a thin, embedded proprietary layer within the OLED display module of a display screen. The patented approach is focused on directing and controlling the light coming out of the display, allowing for privacy to be switched on and off. The design parameters are determined during panel manufacturing and activated by a hardware or software trigger, electronically switching a display from share mode to privacy mode, controlling the viewing angle. This switching can occur in under a millisecond and can be activated manually or automatically through software. The technology can enable as little as 0.3% screen visibility from a 45° viewing angle. The approach is compatible with OLED, LCD, mini-LED and micro-LED displays.

Specifically, Rain Technology’s OLED Switchable Privacy solution is based upon its prior success and intellectual property with its LCD solution. OLED is an organic light-emitting diode, in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is an organic compound film that emits light in response to an electric current. This means that each pixel is controlled individually and emits its own light, unlike LCDs where the light comes from a backlighting element. Rain Technology has adapted its LCD technology to OLED by focusing on controlling this additional light, utilizing proprietary LCD technology and polarization techniques.

Demonstrations of the technology will be provided upon request. For more information on OLED Switchable Privacy solutions from Rain Technology, please visit www.raintechnology.com/switchable-e-privacy.

About Rain Technology

Rain Technology is a display technology innovator. The company created the world’s most advanced directional and switchable privacy display technology and licenses its IP to tier one manufacturers and supply chain partners of laptops and monitors, smartphones, point-of-sale systems (POS), ATMs, automotive displays, and AR/VR devices. Key brands include Switchable Privacy™, No-Driver-Distraction™, Display Screen Branding™, and Anamorphic-XR™ and benefit IT departments, marketers and consumers. Founded in 2017 and privately held, Rain Technology is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with operations in the UK and Taiwan. Visit Rain Technology at www.raintechnology.com, and follow the company on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

Switchable Privacy, No-Driver-Distraction, Display Screen Branding, and Anamorphic-XR are trademarks of Rain Technology. All other brand names and solution names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Tags: Rain Technology, Switchable Privacy, directional display, OLED, LCD, mobile privacy, device privacy, enterprise security, consumer protection, data protection, visual privacy, visual security, visual hackers, shoulder surfers, identity theft, Mobile World Congress, GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act, HIPAA

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