Best Mobile Startups 2010

Emo Labs

It’s a familiar lament in our notebook reviews: an otherwise great laptop is held back by lousy speakers. But there’s not much manufacturers can do. To keep the thickness of a given system to a minimum, they must install ever smaller speakers.

“A ten-year-old tube TV sounds quite a bit better than a new flat-panel TV. As consumer electronics get thinner and smaller, there isn’t room for this big box of air, so the acoustic quality is going down.” So says Jason Carlson, CEO of Emo Labs (pictured below), a company looking to put speakers on a serious diet.

Why the Competition Should Care

Speakers work by pushing air. Traditional cone-shaped speakers create sound by moving in and out. However, the thinness of notebooks limits the depth in which these movements can be made, meaning they won’t sound as good or as loud as a dedicated set of speakers. Emo Labs’ solution is to compensate for this lack of depth by making the speakers very wide—in this case, the size of the display. Piezo actuators vibrate a transparent film in front of the screen, which broadcasts the sound.

Although the company has secured $15 million in funding since 2005, Emo Labs gained a bit more recognition this past fall when it won the People’s Choice Award at the DEMO conference, a prize accompanied by $500,000. More importantly, according to Carlson, the award piqued the interest of several consumer electronics manufacturers, who are currently evaluating the technology.

Outlook

While Emo Labs' speakers will most likely be found in flat-panel HDTVs first—perhaps as early as this year—Carlson also envisions the technology in entertainment and gaming-focused laptops, adding up to 10 percent to the total cost. While only about 10 percent of the total notebook market is likely to embrace enhanced audio technology, it’s still a significant niche. However, the company hasn’t set a time frame for notebook integration.

“People don’t expect great audio from their laptops, even on high-end notebooks,” said John Jacobs, a notebook PC analyst for DisplaySearch. But Emo Labs’ technology could do as much for the gaming market as the new breed of 3D displays. Fraggers would no longer require a quality pair of speakers or headphones while blasting baddies, and that would be music to Carlson’s ears.

Established: 2005
Location: Waltham, Mass.
No. of Employees: 15
Funding: Angel investors, Polaris Venture Partners, Venture Capital Fund of New England