In our newsletters that come out 3-4 times a year, we summarize the latest events and progress in JonDeTech. The goal is to give you, the reader, a better understanding of the current situation as we try to tie together the press releases and other news that regularly comes out. As they usually provide insights into specific events in the company’s development.
When we sent out the CEO letter in December 2022, we had just passed the “working sample” milestone. “Working Sample” was a big event for the company because we had this milestone as an important target for several years. We finally proved that we could create a functioning full-scale and completely outsourced production process with our partners, and we finally completed the technology transfer to Varioprint.
Working sample and focus on sales
As we have said for a long time, the lead time between “working samples” and “engineering samples” is relatively short, which means that very soon, we will finally be able to provide our customers with finished JIRS30 units manufactured in the new production flow. This fact also meant that we decided to scale up the sales work to reach more customers besides Ofilm.
Reduced burn rate
During the first quarter of 2023, we focused much on reducing our burn rate. As most people know, the capital market in 2022 gradually became increasingly challenging, and we saw many companies with difficulties with financing. Therefore, we realized that costs had to be kept down, despite a changed focus towards sales. This meant that we reduced the workforce within product management and production development at the beginning of the year.
Another area where we will become more cost-effective is the continued development project of taking JIRS30 to a commercially launched sensor element. During the spring, we will optimize the number of panels produced to only produce what is needed to qualify JIRS30 and reach “Commercial Samples.” As a result, we expect to reduce these costs over the next three months significantly.
When we receive customer orders on JIRS30, we will scale up production to meet delivery to the customer. Customer-driven production is the keyword in the future.
Sales with a focus on prototypes, PoC, and Design Wins
With a strengthened sales organization, we have been able to address more customers and have seen great interest in our entire portfolio on the market. With much help from our partner Wiser Unicorn, we got initial customer orders for JIRS40 from a customer in China, albeit in small volume at first. Our product will be used in smart locks already on the market, and where JonDeTech will offer a new type of presence detection solution.
We also established a collaborative project with Sunshine Technologies at the end of 2022 to produce a prototype of our “Thermal Painter” application. This exciting solution turns the mobile phone into a cheap thermal imaging camera. The prototype created will be used to demonstrate and sell the application to mobile phone manufacturers in the global market. The potential within that market segment is considerable and can mean decent volumes and income for us, both since we have the patent on the application, and it will drive the sales of our IR sensors.
We have now produced a demo kit to show off our products more efficiently. A further development of this is the Evaluation Kit, which we are putting the finishing touches on, enabling our customers to test and evaluate our products.
Presence detection and heat flow
We currently have several exciting dialogues with customers interested in collaborating with us to make prototypes of final products, including our sensor elements. We are now choosing the right partners that want to invest in the projects where we work together with optimized resources.
Presence detection and non-contact temperature measurement have long been the features we focused on within the scope of the customer applications we explore. Still, in recent months we have seen much interest in sensors focused on heat flow measurement. The ability to measure heat flow is a unique feature of our sensor elements based on nanotechnology; equivalent IR sensor elements based on silicon cannot be used for this purpose.
As it is a unique application area for our proprietary technology, we are currently working feverishly to develop the first prototype of this type of application, which we are doing together with existing customers. Examples of applications where heat flow measurement can be used are temperature measurement through wearables and smart watches, smart patches, and smart buildings, to name a few.
In conclusion…
We hope you got a little more “meat on your bones” about what is happening in the company and that you will continue to accompany us on this journey when we bring our products to market in 2023.
For more news and information about the company, I recommend you follow our YouTube channel and register on our News page. You can also follow us on LinkedIn.
Dean Tosic
vd JonDeTech Sensors AB
