Game over poster with a hand that holds the joystick. flat vector illustration.gettyPicture this: It's Saturday night, you've got your gaming headset on, PS controller in hand, and a bowl of chips strategically placed within reach. You're all set to unwind with some Call of Duty, and your friends are waiting in the party to jump in. But after a few frustrating failed attempts maybe even a full game reinstall (we've all been there, right?) a sinking reality sets in: the PlayStation servers are down. Worldwide.This isnt just a case of game night cancelled. This is a 24-hour disruption impacting a service many of us pay a monthly subscription for on top of game purchases, and it highlights some serious questions about data security concerns in our increasingly subscription-based world.Subscription Economy: Convenience or Potential Frustration?Take a quick peek at your bank app, you might be surprised by how many subscriptions you are paying for. From streaming services to software, the subscription model is everywhere. And companies are increasingly shifting toward it or offering subscription options to generate new revenue streams. But this shift comes with pressure, thanks to demanding consumers.PlayStations have been working on a subscription model for a long time. Users make monthly payments for online access, even for games they have already purchased. Sure, many titles offer offline play, but some require online check-in. And during this recent outage, millions were locked out of games they paid for, unable to access services they're paying good money for. The company announced that PS Plus users will get 5-day extension of their subscription.Want to learn more about how you can combine AI, data, and applications to make your business unstoppable in 2025 and beyond? Join us for thevirtual event on February 13, 2025.Outages can lead to disrupted sales, potential compensation payouts, and long-term damage to brand reputation. The market seems to be taking notice. 2% dip in Sony's stock after the outage news broke shows the financial vulnerability of companies heavily reliant on online services. In the subscription economy, where customer retention is key, maintaining trust is everything.Should we cut companies some slack, or demand when it is about the services, we pay but cannot reach or what about our personal data?Navigating the Cybersecurity RisksCompanies in the subscription business collect and store tons of customers data to personalize experiences, which makes them prime target for cyberattacks.Any outages turn out to be a data breach, the potential fallout for both consumers and big organizations is significant and far-reaching. For users, data breach means leaking personal data, including names, addresses, email addresses, birthdates, passwords, and possibly credit card details that could be leaked.For businesses, it is beyond the immediate hit to profits, reputation, and customer trust but class action lawsuits from individuals whose data was compromised. If the stolen information includes sensitive personal, legal, or medical details, the resulting legal fallout can be significant and potentially long-lasting.According to Sony, this was not a hack but an operational issue that lasted roughly a day, but it caused a serious panic in the PSN community and reminded the 2011 data breachich forced the company to deactivate its servers for 23 days. The financial impact of investigating the incident, enhancing security, and compensating users reached an estimated $171 million.How Can Businesses Protect Their Systems and Data?In cybersecurity, every year seems to be the worst year yet, with expectations of increasingly worsening conditions in the future. Since 2017, financial losses from attacks have quadrupled. Most attacks cause smaller losses (around $500,000), but big ones can be devastating. Once every 10 years, a company can lose up to $2.5 billion from a severe cyber-attack.When it is about enterprise cybersecurity, there is no one-size-fits-allsolution. To protect systems and data with cybersecurity, businesses should take a layered approach to create a unified defense strategy against potential cyberattacks, such as:Cyber Risk Assessment: There are tools that businesses use to analyse and assess the cybersecurit yrisk associated with various types of criticalAnomaly Detection: Using machine learning and AI, security systems can recognize the unusual patterns that deviate from whats considered normal. This enables them to take preventative measures to prepare their defences before the cyber attacks occur.Automated Incident Response: With security automation, organizations can automate responses to cyberattacks like malware or DDoS attacks. This helps them quickly contain threats and prevent them from spreading. By automating the detection and mitigation of these attacks, businesses can reduce downtime and minimize potential damage.Invest in AI-Specific Security: As AI-spesific technologies advances, so do the cybersecurity threats. Organizations should invest in AI to safeguard their systems effectively in order to keep up with the ever evolving cybersecurity landscape. Imagine a scenario where an employee clicks a malicious link in a phishing email, agentic AI can detect the mistake in real time and automatically block the user or send a warning. This all happens without human intervention, which is especially helpful during out-of-office hours. Imagine another scenario, if an attacker steals an employees digital identity and attempts to log in from an unusual location, showing activity patterns inconsistent with the employee's typical behavior. When the risk level exceeds a predefined threshold, agentic AI can automatically lock the account to prevent any potential damage.Train Your Team: Investing in cybersecurity is now a strategic business necessity, not just an IT requirement. While AI handles routine security tasks, enabling teams to tackle complex challenges, human expertise is crucial for strategic innovation. Security professionals require training to identify, prevent, and mitigate sophisticated, AI-driven threats by leveraging human intuition, creativity, and a deep understanding of evolving threats that AI alone cannot fully grasp.Want to learn more about how you can combine AI, data, and applications to make your business unstoppable in 2025 and beyond? Join us for thevirtual event on February 13, 2025.

Below, I outline, based on my experience, some best practices for identifying and addressing NFRs early in the project life cycle.

The big picture: The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has escalated into a full-blown technological arms race. Both sides are pouring resources into developing cutting-edge military drones and counter-drone systems. But in this high-stakes battle, Ukraine has a new weapon: gamers. Rally drivers are often naturally great at racing simulation games like Dirt, and vice versa, so you'd think the same would apply to warfare. Indeed, members of Ukraine's elite Typhoon drone unit told Business Insider that they see gamers as potential recruits. However, they also acknowledged the challenges.Piloting a first-person-view (FPV) drone might seem straightforward on the surface. The headsets are like VR goggles, and the controllers are similar to those of a gaming console. There's even a video game called "Death From Above" that simulates the experience of a Ukrainian drone operator raining hellfire down on Russian forces.However, in the virtual world, you can just hit reset when things go sideways. In real drone warfare, the consequences are deadly."People think flying a military drone is like playing 'Call of Duty,' until they realize there's no restart option," one Typhoon operator told the publication.The Typhoon unit explains that preparing for a real drone mission is an intricate process of analyzing equipment, anticipated obstacles like jamming, real-time intelligence, and coordinating with commanders. Every flight involves multiple evasive maneuvers and constant adjustments for enemy countermeasures and threats. // Related StoriesAs for the Typhoon unit itself, it was officially formed just last year and plays a vital role in Ukraine's National Guard. One of its responsibilities is developing and applying specialized UAV expertise on the battlefield. It does this by combining engineers who can rapidly configure drones with pilots capable of executing complex missions in the chaos of combat.Despite the challenges mentioned above, the unit sees gamers as invaluable recruits for their lightning-fast reflexes and comfort with virtual environments."Gamers make great drone pilots because they are used to fast-moving situations on the screen, just like in real drone operations," Michael, the commander of the unit, stated. "They already have experience making quick decisions, reacting fast, and controlling complex systems, which are all important skills in combat."Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pushing for increased domestic drone production and deployment. Companies and volunteer groups have responded by kicking into high gear, mass-producing relatively cheap drones to fill the gap when Western-supplied artillery runs low.With more drones comes the need for more pilots, and that gap could potentially be filled by recruiting skilled gamers with their finely tuned reflexes gained from video games.Image credit: Typhoon

What just happened? A divide emerged between the United States and Europe regarding the regulation of AI at the AI Action summit held in Paris this week. While approximately 60 countries, including China, India, and Germany, signed a declaration to ensure AI is "safe, secure, and trustworthy," the US and the UK notably withheld their support. Vice President JD Vance cautioned against "overly precautionary" regulations on AI, emphasizing the US commitment to maintaining its dominance in the technology. "The Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US, with American-designed and manufactured chips," Vance said before the assembled crowd of world leaders and tech executives. "America wants to partner with all of you...but to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it," he added.The summit declaration calls for "ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy, taking into account international frameworks for all."Although the commitments are non-binding, the US and UK had previously signed similar declarations at earlier AI summits. This shift signals a potentially more competitive approach to AI development under the new US administration. Vance's speech was "a 180-degree turnaround from what we saw with the Biden administration," Keegan McBride, a lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute, told the Financial Times.The UK government released a brief statement saying it had not been able to sign the agreement due to concerns about national security and global governance. "We felt the declaration didn't provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it," a government spokesperson told the BBC. Meanwhile, Downing Street insists its decision was not based on the US shift. "This is about our own national interest, ensuring the balance between opportunity and security," the spokesperson said.The US stance comes amid increasing competition with China in AI development, including chip manufacturing, foundational models, AI chatbots, and the energy required for supercomputers. The recent emergence of the cut-price AI model from the Chinese research lab DeepSeek, for example, caught Silicon Valley groups off guard. // Related StoriesAs for Europe, it is actively seeking to establish a stronger foothold in the AI industry, aiming to reduce reliance on the US and China. French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the two-day summit, where European leaders and companies unveiled approximately 200 billion euros in planned investments in data centers and computing clusters to support the region's AI endeavors. "We need these rules for AI to move forward," he said.Vance also cautioned countries against entering AI deals with "authoritarian regimes," a veiled reference to China. He warned that "partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure," citing CCTV and 5G as examples of "cheap tech...[was] heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes."Concerns were also raised by the US that Current AI, a foundation launched by France during the summit, could be used to funnel money to French-speaking countries.Frederike Kaltheuner, senior EU and global governance lead at the AI Now Institute, noted that following the launch of the powerful open models from DeepSeek, Europeans felt they had a chance to compete in AI. McBride said of Vance's speech: "[It] was like, 'Yeah, that's cute. But guess what? You know you're actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It's us."

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsWhat is the solution?Whats the technology pipeline?Why does this approach matter?The most successful digital scam is one that is tied to convenience. QR codes, which are used for everything from sharing contacts to making payments, are an ideal vector. In India, which runs the worlds largest digital payment system, QR code scams have become a regular nuisance.I regularly hear from retail shop owners and cab drivers about how they were duped using a fake QR code or app, and similar is the tale of online shoppers. Parking lot QR scams are also rampant in the US and UK, but stealing a few dollars is not the only risk.Recommended VideosIts the theft of sensitive data, including financial details, that has even put banking giants on alert. If you scanned the QR code and entered your credentials, like your username and password, into a website, change your password right away, the US Federal Trade Commission said in an alert note barely a couple of weeks ago. The Swiss national security agency has also issued a warning about bad actors sending physical QR codes via mail to the doorsteps to steal passwords, a heist that is commonly known as quishing, short for QR phishing. Of course, we cant nuke the QR tech stack over such risks, except for raising awareness, but we finally might have a solution from the experts at the University of Rochester.Instead of blocky dots, SDMQR codes use ellipses. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsThe technology in question is a self-authenticating dual-modulated QR (SDMQR) code. It stops the potential for scams before users are even taken to a fake website or fraudulent web repository, by flagging the risk as soon as the code is scanned. But before we get into the technical details, let me break down the biggest advantages of this secure path to QR code technology:It is self-authenticating, which means the QR code already has the verified digital signature of the entity behind it, which is verified every time you scan it on your phone.Aside from taking users to websites, they can also be used for payments and encoding secure information, among other related scenarios.The QR code verification happens on-device. You dont need an internet connection to check if its legitimate or fraudulent.It does not require any specialized app or software update for existing QR code scanning apps.The system does not create any unwanted operational delay or latency.These secure QR codes can be customized to fit the design requirements, without hampering their safeguards.It doesnt need a high-resolution smartphone camera to work. The one in your pocket will do just fine at scanning SDMQR codes.These QR codes can also have colors, so brands can get them customized for better identity recognition.Existing machines that read QR codes can also read SDMQR codes, with a warning system in tow.The best part about this approach is that an average user wont have to go through any technical hoops to protect their interest. For companies that rely on QR codes and want to protect their business, they simply have to register their official websites URL and embed their signature in the code.SDQMR codes look different than traditional QR codes. Instead of the mainstream pixel-style block imprint, they make use of ellipses. The team behind the tech stack has filed a patent and has already secured a National Science Foundation I-Corps grant to explore the replacement of traditional bar codes with SDMQR codes.Going a step further, the team is also exploring whether using colors can make these codes more versatile. With versatility, they mean using the same QR code to guide users in up to three different directions, or web destinations.University of Rochester / IEEE Security & PrivacySDMQR codes offer proactive front-end protection against quishing before the link is even accessed, says the research paper published in the IEEE Security & Privacy Journal. As mentioned above, we are simply talking about a retrofit, and not a framework that would turn the whole QR ecosystem upside down.The whole process relies on two components. A primary message (such as the URL of a business) and a corresponding cryptographic signature of that message. This cryptographic signature is generated and owned by a business in possession of a digital private key. A DMQR encoder embeds the primary and secondary messages into the SDMQR code.If you look at the code, you will notice elliptical patterns in black and white. As per the researchers, the variation patterns hide the primary message, while the orientation data carries the secondary message.Flagging a risky QR code destination. University of Rochester / IEEE Security & PrivacyOnce the code is scanned on a phone, a DMQR decoder breaks down the primary and secondary messages for verification. At this stage, the public key of the business (which created the code) performs algorithmic verification to check whether the cryptographic secondary message matches the contents of the unencrypted primary message.Think of it as a two-stage secret handshake between spy agents.The biggest challenge is not the tech stack, but creating a centralized system where all businesses can come together and perform the necessary registration to create unique SDMQR codes. The idea is to create a public key for these legitimate entities, which is also the only thing an SDMQR code reader requires.This is where makers of smartphone operating systems aka Google and Apple can help create a safer future. Their participation as central signatories would mean a smartphone or tablet would only require their two public keys for quickly authenticating SDMQR codes.Approving a legitimate URL after an SDMQR code scan. University of Rochester / IEEE Security & PrivacySince they offer built-in QR code scanning frameworks for iOS and Android, using them as central signatories is the best way forward. On a technical level, their participation would dramatically ease the verification process as SDMQR code readers would only need to store just two public keys and get the job done.Theres definitely some precedent for that. Google lets businesses sign up to get a verified badge and icon in Gmail, so that users dont fall for spoof emails trying to pass off as a legitimate message.A healthy few technical proposals have appeared in the past few years to fix the problem of QR code scams, but they all arrived with their fair share of limitations. The SDMQR system solves a few key fundamental hurdles to ease the adoption without any technical hassles.It takes a transparent approach to self-authentication and doesnt require any software update to the QR code reader apps installed on a persons phone. They will work just fine with regular QR and the more secure SDMQR codes.Otherwise, tasking developers or OS-makers to deploy an ecosystem-wide synchronized update would not only be a massive challenge, but also take its own sweet time. Further enhancing the convenience for adopters is the single central signatory system, which requires only one key for verification. And the best part is that smartphone users wont even require an internet connection for the verification protocols to jump into action.SDMQR codes will work just fine with a dash of stylistic personalization. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsPrevious efforts to build secure QR code systems put their faith in cryptographic keys for QR code generators in order to authenticate the identity. A few other ideas involved individual public-private key pairs, which means a users mobile device was expected to carry (or have locally saved) the public keys for all the parties that signed up for creating secure codes for authentication and identity verification.Using our proposed protocol, mobile devices can determine whether the information is deemed authentic by the signatory, immediately on the mobile device itself, says the team in the research paper.Another advantage is that the inherent dual-modulating tech can also be applied to bar codes, which means even codes that are used for airline boarding passes and courier pcackage can take advantage of the framework.The biggest beneficiary of SDMQR codes would be banking institutions. Researchers argue that their deployment in parking payment systems can reliably protect users from being targeted by QR-based phishing attacks as well as financial losses.The latter aspect also applies to all scenarios where people often run into QR codes plastered in public places. That includes Wi-Fi access, opening a restaurants menu, and relaying a business location, among others. Wi-Fi jacking is a well-known threat that quickly spirals into utter chaos for an average user, so any solution to plug that vulnerability should find mass adoption.The ball is now in Google and Apples backyard. They already provide the OS-level software sauce for decoding QR and bar codes. All they need to do is vet and implement support for the new SDMQR framework, and guard the interests of smartphone users across the world.Editors RecommendationsThe M1 has a major security loophole that Apple cant patch

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Google will hold its annual developer conference, Google I/O, on May 20, 2025. It will be held over two days, and is an opportunity for all those working in the world of Android, Gemini, Wear OS, and the entire Google ecosystem to come together and learn about new products, services, and technology.For those who arent developers, the big draw of Google I/O is the keynote presentation, which kicks off proceedings. Traditionally it informs everyone about the top new features and products from the company, whether thats new software, hardware, or concept devices hinting at where Google is headed in the future. We expect to hear about Android 16, the next version of Wear OS, and of course, Googles Gemini AI.Recommended VideosFor the last few years I/Os keynote has been very AI heavy, with Google demonstrating every possible feature it can cram into its AI. While often impressive, the intense focus has taken some of the magic away from I/O for those not deep into AI. However, I/Os keynote should always be considered essential viewing for anyone interested in technology.Please enable Javascript to view this contentYou can catch up on all the announcements from Google I/O 2024 here, which gives you an idea of what to expect from the 2025 event. Often, the concept products and innovations such as Project Astra form the basis of future Google updates, announcements and events.Google livestreams the event, and you dont have to register as a developer to watch. Developers who want to take part in the many workshops do have to register, and can do so here. When the time comes, Digital Trends will bring you in-depth coverage from Google I/O 2025.Editors Recommendations

Tech vendors like OpenAI and Microsoft are banking on business readiness to use the autonomous AI bots, but companies arent so sure.

Elon Musks bid for OpenAI and his divisive political image raise new risks for Teslas expensive stock.

Nevertheless, it moves If it moves, its probably alive: Searching for life on other planets Scientists find a way to look for alien life that doesn't need elaborate equipment. Jacek Krywko Feb 12, 2025 7:20 am | 0 If there's life on other planets in our Solar System, it probably won't be this obvious. If there's life on other planets in our Solar System, it probably won't be this obvious. Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe search for extraterrestrial life has always been a key motivator of space exploration. But if we were to search Mars, Titan, or the subsurface oceans of Europa or Enceladus, it seems like all we can reasonably hope to find is extremophile microbes. And microbes, just a few microns long and wide, will be difficult to identify if were relying on robots working with limited human supervision and without all the fancy life-detecting gear we have here on Earth.To solve that problem, a team of German researchers at the Technical University in Berlin figured that, instead of having a robot looking for microbes, it would be easier and cheaper to make the microbes come to the robot. The only ingredient they were lacking was the right bait.Looking for movementMost ideas we have for life detection on space mission rely on looking for chemical traces of life, such as various metabolites. Most recent missions, the Perseverance rover included, werent equipped with any specialized life-detecting instruments. On Mars, the focus was on looking for signs of possible ancient lifefossils or other traces of microbes, says Max Riekeles, an astrobiologist at the Technical University Berlin. The last real in-situ life detection missions were performed by Viking landers, which is quite a while back already,We didnt fit more advanced instruments that could reliably look at chemical biosignatures of microbes living on Mars on the most recent mission because such instruments would add too much mass, boost energy consumption, and require additional computing power. So, Riekeles and his colleagues suggested a much simpler and lighter life detection system based on the most obvious biosignature of them all: motility. When you see something move on its own, you can tell its alive, right?But how do you get an alien microbe moving? From previous research, Riekeles knew most microbes, even those living in extreme environments, are attracted to L-serine, an amino acid used by organisms on Earth to build proteins. The microbes sense the presence of L-serine in their surroundings and move toward it, a behavior known as chemotaxis. Also, there seems to be evidence L-serine was found outside of Earth, and it was present in the Martian environment, Riekeles said.Once the bait was sorted, the team chose its test subjects, the microorganisms chosen to play the part of aliens were extremophile bacteria. They picked several, including Bacillus subtilis, which can survive in temperatures reaching 100 C, and Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis, which lived in the cold waters of Antarctica. The third organism they used was Haloferax volcanii, an archaeon inhabiting extremely saline environments like the Dead Sea. This one was especially interesting to us because we know from spectral evidence that there seems to be a lot of salt on Mars,Riekeles explains.The researchers used glass containers divided into two chambers separated by a barrier. Samples with microbes ended up in one chamber, the L-serine in the other, and the barrier, formed using a gel, was formulated to be permeable to microbes but impenetrable by abiotic particles. ThenRiekeles and his colleagues watched the containers using a rather simple microscope, looking for blobs of microbes forming in the L-serine chamber. Blobs were observed in experiments with all three microbes, which happily relocated to L-serine chambers within an hour and a half or so.Movement detected; life confirmed.The problem is a life-detection system like that should work well, provided those possible alien microbes look like microbes on Earth. But what if alien life proves a bit more surprising?Baiting the unknownOn the face of it, Riekeles idea to bet on motility as a biosignature seems quite robust against possible different chemistries and natures of alien life. You can imagine life that is not similar to our life but still evolved motility just because motility is super useful in terms of evolutionit evolved multiple times independently here on Earth, Reikeles says. But the limitations start to appear when you plunge deeper into details.The most obvious one is that only around 40 percent of prokaryotes on Earth can move. If that percentage holds true for alien worlds, well be missing more than half of possible extraterrestrial microbes right off the bat. And even microbes that can move might prove a bit tricky.The second issue is the unknown size of alien microbes. Riekeles and his colleagues knew how big the organisms they studied were beforehand, so the permeability of membranes separating the chambers was fine-tuned to let these microbes through. But what if the aliens turned out to be a bit larger than expected? At this point we are not sure what kind of membrane would be best for Mars missions. We also dont know how our membranes would perform in Mars temperatures and atmosphere, Riekeles acknowledges. Designing a more universal membrane will be its own research project.Even if the membrane issue gets sorted out, there is still the question of possible different chemistries of alien life starting with left-handed chirality. Life on Earth is based on left-handed amino acids. This is why Riekelesused L-serine, rather than R-serine in his experiments. But what if life on alien worlds evolved to choose the right-handed variety? Should we include R-serine too when sending missions to Mars or elsewhere, just in case?And how do you bait life that is completely, not just slightly alien? what if we assume, after the molecular simulation experiments done at Cornell University back in 2015, that cell membranes made of vinyl cyanide could form in the liquid methane found on Saturns moon Titan? The answers lie in the final design of the life-detecting instrument that Riekeles has in mind.The optimal way of doing it for a Mars mission would be to come up with a system where a sample is in the middle, surrounded by a variety of amino acids with different chirality,Riekeles says. He expects that coming up with baits for life with different methane-based biochemistry should be possible. But we havent explored that yet. We need to test way more organisms and see what substances are working for the most of them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, unfortunately, Riekeles says. The next step for Riekeles life detection system will be testing it in a Mars simulation chamber replicating atmospheric conditions, temperature, irradiation, and the regolith properties present on the Red Planet.Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 2025. DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1490090Jacek KrywkoAssociate WriterJacek KrywkoAssociate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 0 Comments

The wait continues An update on highly anticipatedand elusiveMicro LED displays New (and cheaper) Micro LED TVs have been announced. Scharon Harding Feb 12, 2025 7:00 am | 5 Samsung's Micro LED TV. Credit: Samsung Samsung's Micro LED TV. Credit: Samsung Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreMicro LED has become one of the most anticipated display technologies for consumer products in recent years. Using self-emissive LEDs as pixels, the backlight-free displays combine the contrast-rich capabilities of OLED with the brightness and durability potential of LCD-LED displays, and they avoid burn-in issues.We're often asked about the future of Micro LED and when display enthusiasts can realistically expect to own a TV or monitor with the technology. Here's the latest on the highly anticipatedand still elusivedisplay technology.Still years awayMicro LED is still years away from being suitable for mass production of consumer products, as the industry is struggling to manage obstacles like manufacturing costs and competition from other advanced display tech like OLED. Micro LED TVs are currently available for purchase, but they cost six figures, making them unattainable for the vast majority of people."It will probably take another five years until we see real consumer products," Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence, told me.Display manufacturer AUO, which has been working on numerous applications for Micro LED, said in an emailed statement that it plans to develop consumer products over the next couple of years:For the applications other than automotive, AUOs Micro LED display technology has been applied on wearable device like smartwatch[es] for fashion... in 2023, and it is expected to be available for mass production in 2025. Moving forward, AUO plans to apply larger Micro LED displays on TVs, notebooks, and monitors in two years.Despite enthusiasm from technologists and the display community, the mainstream infatuation with OLED makes it harder for Micro LED to move into consumer products. Many shoppers already know about the benefits of OLED and may have experienced it for years. In recent years, OLED technology has also improved by getting brighter and cheaper.While Micro LED could address some of OLED's limitations, it doesn't have the recognition of OLED in the consumer market. Any company releasing Micro LED consumer products will have to educate shoppers about the benefits of the display technology and why it's better than OLED or even cheaper options. As such, much of the Micro LED industry is still focusing on highly differentiating applications, Virey said, like making specialized transparent displays for cars or advertising, very large commercial screens, and augmented reality (AR).Ross Young, CEO at Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), also isnt expecting Micro LED in commercialized monitors or laptops in 2025 and pointed to other, more affordable options taking the spotlight."We will continue to see very small quantities [of Micro LED] in very large TVs," he said. "However, with LCDs now appearing in 100 [-inch and larger] sizes with much lower prices, we dont expect to see much growth in Micro LED TVs."For now, the best bet for Micro LED in 2025 consumer products is smartwatches, Virey told us.Biggest obstaclesNaturally, one of the biggest obstacles facing Micro LED adoption is cost. You need a lot of Micro LEDs for each device, as each pixel in a Micro LED device uses one red LED, one blue LED, and one green LED per pixel. That's a total of 24,883,200 Micro LEDs for a 4K TV (3,8402,1603).There are also technical challenges with manufacturing the LEDs, including Micro LED transfer and assembly. "At a high level, the cost of this process doesnt really scale with the number of LEDs but more with the display area. So it can be expressed in terms of $/cm2," Virey explained. "A smartwatch is about 12 cm2 ... A 100[-inch] TV is 28,000 cm2, so the assembly will cost roughly 2,333 times more than assembling a smartwatch. Its more complicated than that, but at a high level, thats the trend."Further, Micro LED yields have been an ongoing challenge, considering the intricacy and minute components involved in Micro LED products.According to Virey:When youre assembling 25 million Micro LEDs that are the size of bacteria with a precision of 1 or 2 micron and are trying to do that in less than 15 minutes, youre going to have some bad LEDs and bad electrical connections. You need to identify which ones are defective and replace them. Today, thats still a very inefficient and costly process. In my opinion, yield management and repair are the number 1 obstacle today for cheaper Micro LED displays.Another common issue is that manufacturers need to make displays with a pixel pitch (or distance between pixels) small enough that people won't be able to see the space between pixels.Acceptable pixel pitch for displays varies based on resolution and size. For a 4K TV, for example, a 75-inch Micro LED TV would need a 0.43 mm pitch, which is equivalent to about 59 pixels per inch (ppi). A 146-inch Micro LED TV would need an approximately 0.84 mm pitch, equivalent to 30 ppi (this is the pixel pitch claimed by Samsung's 146-inch Micro LED TV "The Wall").Virey told us that this obstacle has been largely addressed, though. "Many Micro LED companies have, for example, shown smartwatch displays with 326 ppi. Thats a 0.08 mm pitch, much tighter than any TV will ever need," he said. "So I dont see pitch as a major obstacle. The main challenge remains cost."Recent Micro LED productsWhile Micro LED is still years away from being readily available in digestible pricing, some products are beginning to make it to market.A positive sign comes from the C Series Micro LED TVs that Awall demoed at CES last month. They start at $7,990 for a 21:9, 75-inch display with a 1.2 mm pixel pitch (for comparison, Samsungs 89-inch, 4K Micro LED TV has an approximately 0.8 mm pitch, per Digital Trends). The most expensive Micro LED display on Awalls website is $49,900 (16:9, 162 inches with a 0.9 pixel pitch). Believe it or not, those are low prices for a Micro LED display today. The devices are marketed as being modular, meaning Awall expects (wealthy) people to buy multiple TVs that will work in tandem to provide a larger viewing area. World's first DIY upgradable Micro LED TV. Still, Awalls offerings, if released this quarter as expected, should start to bring down the cost of entry for Micro LED, even though the TVs are too expensive for most. The modular design also means that people could buy a 75-inch panel to start and add more panels for a larger viewing area in the future. Using multiple panels to make an ultra-large display means more space between pixels, which helps address another concern with having lots of tiny LEDs in close proximity: heat. (Having separate panels could break up the image in a distracting fashion, though, depending on how close you're sitting to the TVs.)Another development we're seeing around Micro LED displays comes from Nanosys, a supplier of quantum dots. It recently showed off a prototype of what it described as an ultraviolet MicroLED with [quantum dot] color conversion." CTC, a Foxconn division, built the prototype smartwatch display. It uses four ultraviolet LEDs per pixel, providing a backup subpixel in case of failure.As noted by technology journalist Geoffrey Morrison, A dead subpixel would be found in the manufacturing process, and whatever subpixel color isn't working would get a spray of that color. While this fourth subpixel would increase the overall cost of this aspect of production by 33 percent or so, researchers are estimating it would improve yields enough that it would be more than worthwhile."The device shown at CES 2025 was able to hit 1,000 nits, and Foxconn estimated that such a device could reach 3,000 nits. It could be commercialized as soon as next year, but while the tech could apply to larger screen sizes, I would expect it to be in a smaller format like a watch, Jeff Yurek, Nanosys' VP of marketing, told me.The primary benefit of UV Micro LED compared to standard Micro LED is manufacturability, the executive said. "Printing all three colors onto four subpixels gives lots of flexibility and can enable error-free displays. This is very hard to do with Micro LED," Yurek said. "The image quality benefits are mostly [the] same as other Micro LEDs: perfect blacks, super high brightness, [and] some possibility for improved power efficiency, depending on the type of Micro LED system you are comparing to.When asked how UV Micro LED could benefit larger-screen gadgets compared to Micro LED, Yurek pointed to strong viewing angles. However, getting UV Micro LEDs into larger devices requires a manufacturing equipment update.Only one line exists today, and it is oriented toward smaller displays. Youd need bigger printers, basically," Yurek said.Another reason to keep your eye on Micro LED this year, ironically, comes from a product announcement that many would consider not to be true Micro LED.At CES, Samsung announced that it will release the worlds first RGB MICRO LED TVs. It claimed that the sets would offer the first full-color local dimming, lowest power consumption, and slimmest design in a consumer display. The CES website describes the TVs as using "MICRO-sized RGB (red, green, and blue light) separately through even smaller LEDs behind the main panel." Samsung plans to release the technology in 75-inch and 85-inch 4K TVs, as well as in an 8K 98-incher. Samsung RGB Micro LED. Unlike traditional Micro LED, Samsungs Micro LED TVs arent self-emissive. But Samsungs products are still good news for Micro LED expectants, Virey said. The Samsung TVs further the performance of LCD tech, he said, keeping LCD competitive against OLED.He added:Samsung probably uses advanced production and assembly technologies developed for Micro LED to produce this display. With real Micro LED still a few years away from prime time, its good that those technologies can find commercial applications now. It will encourage companies to keep advancing [Micro LED] technologies.Further, Virey estimates that technology like Samsung's "RGB Micro LED" will find its way into more midrange products in two to three years sooner than we can expect true Micro LED options.Micro LED also saw notable developments in 2024. For example, AUO showed off the largest single-module Micro LED display, a 31-inch panel suitable for monitors. The Taiwan-based company didn't disclose the panel's resolution but said that it has 500 nits max brightness. Although AUO pointed to the technology potentially being used for "medical management," it's not hard to imagine this sort of technology making its way into a consumer 31-inch-class monitor in the coming years.I also spoke with Alediaa French startup making Micro LED chips for AR, smartwatches, and other applicationsthat recently announced a $200 million Micro LED factory for AR displays. CEO Pierre Laboisse told me that "mass production" will begin this year. The company plans to make significant steps in 2025 by sampling Micro LED solutions for preferred partners and ramping up the capability of a new fab.Small-batch production is expected to accelerate commercialization by the end of 2025, beginning of 2026, and beyond," he added. While Laboisse doesn't expect Micro LED monitors to be readily available to consumers this year, he pointed to gaming monitors being earlier adopters than other types of monitors.Micro LED development for TVs and monitors in 2025 is expected to see notable technological advancements rather than stagnation The industry is transitioning from early adoption to broader commercialization, with gaming monitors, AR, and automotive applications likely leading mainstream adoption before TVs," Laboisse said.Micro LED in carsOutside of consumer gadgets, another likely landing place for Micro LED is inside vehicles. AUO, for example, last month demoed a "smart cockpit" that included Micro LED technology in the center console, sunroof, windows, and steering wheel.In a statement to Ars, AUO said that it's working closely with clients on the development of Micro LED displays that drivers can interact with. It has already demoed a "Micro LED media bar" mounted to the front of an electric vehicle from Sony Honda Mobility. AUO's Micro LED Media Bar Solution on a Sony Honda Mobility AFEELA car. Credit: AUO "We can expect to see the automotive Micro LED displays in [the] near future," AUO's statement said.Keep waitingThere's still debate about whether Micro LED will really be able to carve out a place for itself in the market amid competition from OLED and cheaper options, as well as QDEL, or quantum dot electroluminescent displays. (For a deep dive into QDEL, be sure to check out our explainer.)Some analysts Ars spoke with have noted the potential for QDEL to be sold alongside Micro LED and/or OLED, while others have said it's too early to tell if the technologies will coexist. We won't know until QDEL enters commercialization, which is expected by 2026.So yes, Micro LED continues to be an exciting display technology for enthusiasts to anticipate. But that anticipation will have to keep building, as affordability and mainstream availability still remain a few years away.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 5 Comments