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2D scanned laser projection.
Miguel Khoury/Microvision
I
t’s amazing what we carry in our pockets these days. From cell phones to iPods to
PDAs, we have at our fingertips connectivity with friends and colleagues around
the world, libraries of text, music, photos, videos and more.
Unfortunately, the displays that we use to view all this information are also small;
they are flat-panel screens with just a few square inches of display area. No wonder
that projectors that display large images from within handheld electronic devices—
the so-called pico-projectors—are drawing so much attention in the tech world.
With pico-projectors, you can project a full-size image onto whatever is near at hand,
whether it be the wall, your shirt, or a piece of paper. Pico-projectors represent a core
enabling technology for the future growth of portable devices.
Moreover, scanned laser pico-projectors have an infinite focus that can be projected onto surfaces with any 3D depth profile and remain in focus. The possible applications are various and many. Aside from having a larger format for typical mobile
applications, such as reading e-mail and sharing pictures, pico-projectors could be
used for impromptu business presentations or perhaps scientific visualizations.
From a business point of view, the size of the market for pico-projectors is extremely
large. In 2007, there were worldwide sales of more than 1 billion mobile phones, 200
million personal media players, 125 million digital cameras, and 25 million Nintendo
DS handheld game devices. And it’s not just device manufacturers who stand to benefit by offering a larger-screen viewing experience. Service providers would also have
the opportunity to sell bandwidth, and content providers could sell more compelling
and rich multimedia content. A handful of manufacturers, including Samsung and
3M, are already beginning to offer pico-projectors this year as stand-alone accessories
that can be attached to other handheld devices. By 2010, pico-projectors that are
embedded into devices will become available.
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