poLight ASA Confirms Positive Feedback for the Autofocus Performance of TLens® Selfie Camera on MEIZU 20 Infinity Smartphone

HORTEN, Norway - August 24, 2023 -- poLight ASA (https://www.polight.com/home/default.aspx) (OSE: PLT) announced that the company has confirmed the high performance of the front-facing autofocus selfie camera enabled by TLens® on the MEIZU 20 Infinity smartphone, that clearly demonstrates exceptional image quality replicating the human eye as reported during the company's last quarterly earnings presentation (https://www.polight.com/investors/news-and-events/News/news-details/2023/poLight-ASA---continues-to-make-headway-in-important-markets/default.aspx). The MEIZU 20 Infinity smartphone, which began shipping in volume in June, features a 32MP camera leveraging the poLight TLens®, providing instantaneous focus up to 10x faster than competing technologies. Its sharp, fast, constant field of view functionality is ideal for continuous video capture, All-In-Focus or Light Field Capture without additional image editing software, setting the MEIZU 20 Infinity smartphone ahead of the competition as consumers' desire for optimal selfie video and picture taking continues to grow.    

During the product unveiling event in Shanghai, China, March 30, 2023, MEIZU's executive highlighted the TLens® tunable optics technology as the driving force behind the MEIZU 20 Infinity selfie camera functionality. "The most important feature of the selfie camera is the user experience. This selfie camera has a milli-second auto focus speed and no breathing effect, just like the human eye, creating a much better user experience for selfies, video meetings or live telecast applications."

Smartphones dominate photo capture, driven by selfies, Millennials and image-based applications

According to Photutorial (https://photutorial.com/photos-statistics/), of the 1.72 trillion photos taken every year, 92.5 percent of all photos taken in 2023 will be captured by a smartphone, and one in every third will be a selfie.  By region, the average United States citizen takes 20.2 photos per day, followed by Asia-Pacific with 15 photos per day, Latin America with 11.8 photos per day, and Europe with 4.9 photos per day. Demographically, 82 percent (https://www.statista.com/statistics/304861/us-adults-shared-selfie-generation/) of U.S. adults aged 18-34 have taken a selfie and uploaded it to a social media website. This age group is expected to take 25,000 selfies during their lifetime, spending 38 hours each year taking those selfies according to a Luster survey (https://www.owler.com/reports/luster-premium-white/luster-premium-white-blog-staggering-stats-on-self/1484783041806) of 1,000 U.S. millennials. Selfie imaging-based social media application platforms continue to dominate social networks (https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/) with seven out of the top 10 relying on photos, with BeReal usage growing (https://www.businessofapps.com/data/bereal-statistics/) 315 percent in 2022 and increasing to six million people accessing the app daily in March 2023. Smartphones that excel in capturing selfies will support this in-demand application.

Tunable optics technology drives innovation

poLight's TLens® offers the industry's smallest size and lowest power consuming autofocus actuation with exceptional optical stability that is immune to magnetic interference or gravity. Based on proven piezo MEMS and proprietary polymer-based tunable optics technology, TLens® enables smartphone manufacturers and camera module manufacturers to dramatically exceed current image capture capabilities. 

"We are excited to see MEIZU bring their milestone smartphone to market, and proud to be a part of the selfie camera technology which is in high demand from consumers around the world," said Dr. Øyvind Isaksen, CEO of poLight ASA. "We anticipate demand for this type of imaging technology to grow as selfie imaging-based social media applications continue to dominate consumer's smartphone usage."