Is a Microprojector in Your Future?
March 30th, 2008 (9:39am) Mike Gunderloy 6 Comments
The New York Times, in a story based largely on information from marketing research firm Insight Media, is predicting a coming wave of tiny digital projectors - microprojectors - hitting the shelves by the end of this year. Insight’s own site goes on to say that they expect the market for these devices, and even smaller projectors built into cell phones and similar devices (”picoprojectors”) to hit 30 million units by 2012.
The basic idea is that advances in lasers and LEDs are making it possible to build into a small device - say, the size of a large cell phone - something that can project a picture a couple of feet when there’s light in the room, or on to the wall in a dark room. So, if you’re out to lunch with a prospective investor, you can whip out your iPhone and your microprojector and give your presentation, with slides, right on the tablecloth.
One thing that should temper your enthusiasm for this brave new world, though, is that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard “by the end of this year” predictions. Last year Iljin Display, one of the manufacturers of these devices, was predicting cell phone projectors by the end of 2007.
Still, as web workers, you readers ought to be prime candidates for such devices whenever they ship. Which opens the question: is this something that attracts you? Do you see situations in which you’d carry around a separate unit and mess with cables to be able to blow up the image from the teeny-tiny screen on your phone? Will this be more attractive in a few years when the functionality is built right into your phone? Or is this a product in search of a reason to exist?
6 Comments Post your own comment
Piku says: March 30th, 2008 10:55am
If the price is affordable, coupled with a smart PDA (like say N810) I’d buy it.
As for the wires, I’d prefer using bluetooth on a standalone unit.
Josh Holden says: March 30th, 2008 12:33pm
The technology sounds great, but I seriously doubt it will find it’s way into cell phones for years and years to come.
Remember, technology needs to filter down from larger, power-hungry equipment to smaller and yet smaller devices. We still haven’t seen an amazingly small projector on it’s own with this technology. When it advances, we’ll see it in large business laptops, then maybe smaller ones, then maybe cell phones.
Along this course, the market will decide if it’s worth of continued development into the next, smaller device. I suspect not.
rhodes says: March 30th, 2008 1:22pm
Absolutely. This is a killer. Forget web workers, this will be a huge hit with teenagers (and therefore will make a ton of money and become routine).
It may take a while to get started, but it will eventually be as routine as phones with web connections are now. It hits directly one one of the biggest pain points in present technology, mini-screens.
cha0tic says: March 30th, 2008 7:59pm
GAMING! Great gaming anywhere. One that works with a DS or PSP. Yes please. When can I get one?
addrokk says: March 31st, 2008 2:15pm
Josh, I disagree with you. The path large business laptop > small laptop > mobile device might be invalid in just a few years.
Since more and more people are turning into distributed organisations, and the majority of tech-progression is made by quite small companies and often in a open source environment it might not be long until the development-chain is reversed also in hardware.
One of the main problems (my problems) when you are a web-worker/distributed team is that you have to carry heavy and large equipment around with you. I carry my Mac Book Pro and a Sony Ericsson P1i as my main work-devices … and that too me is really large, heavy and unflexible. What I want and need is a ultra small (cell phone sized) info/data-hub, a device with no hard drive just a processor, wifi, projection and a projected/foldable keyboard. With that I could reach all my online documents/online desktop and work with it without the heavy backpack/bag.
Since the “major players” today often is small and distributed they share the same issues as other web-workers (and not the issues of large multi national corporations). They will start to develop hardware that is solving their issues and at the same time make the technology available to the rest of the public.
So I think that in a very near future we will see cell-phone-sized devices with microprojectors, hi-speed wifi, soft/foldable or projected keyboards that will make out laptops obsolete. That will be the new “online workstation”.
Wayne Smallman says: March 31st, 2008 2:47pm
It’s ironic, really. I ran a tongue-in-cheek “critique” of the iPhone and one of the flaws identified was the lack of a built-in projector:
“I do a lot of presentations, and I was surprised to discover the iPhone has no projector function. This will surely stymie it’s deployment throughout our company.” Head of Sales & Marketing at a large financial institution in New York, USA.
All good fun, eh…