Pico projectors are set for a massive jump in shipments during the next four years as they hit a number of commercial markets including mobile phones, according to analyst iSuppli.
Shipments will rise to more than three million units in 2013, up from less than 50,000 units in 2009.
In the middle of last year, Texas Instruments demonstrated 3D-ready projectors and lamp-free data projectors based on the company's DLP chip technology.
The chip uses an array of millions of micro-mirrors which can be switched at high speed, which enables the simultaneous display of left-eye and right-eye images required for the brain to create a 3D picture.
It is the rapid refresh rate of the DLP chip which supports 3D viewing.
According to TI, as many as 30 manufacturers will have projectors on the market soon, including BenQ, InFocus, LightSpeed, Mitsubishi, Optoma, Sharp and ViewSonic.
In January, Cambridge-based laser projector firm Light Blue Optics unveiled its first product, an interactive projector that turns a flat surface into a touch screen.
Called Light Touch, the cigarette-sized box creates a 10in. display and runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.1. Inside is the firm's proprietary holographic laser projection technology, which in this case produces WVGA resolution video images, plus an infra red touch sensing system.
iSuppli defines pico projectors as front projectors weighing less than 0.9kg and measuring less than 983 cubic cm without a battery pack.
“Despite their small size, pico projectors produce large displays, with some products capable of showing bright, 50in. diagonal images on a wall or other surface,” said iSuppli.
“Pico projectors are likely to find initial acceptance in the corporate market, allowing businesspeople to make presentations directly from their mobile PCs, smartphones or PDAs. However, they also have a strong allure to consumers, allowing large-sized display of video, internet sites and applications.”
Pico projectors are being used by mobile phone and laptop designers to create a large-area display from a small battery-powered terminal.
Texas Instruments DLP Products is in the process of shrinking the base semiconductor technology behind its pico projectors to make them more suitable for integrating into mobile phones.
iSuppli said Samsung is already selling a projector mobile phone, dubbed Show, in South Korea. And at the Consumer Electronics Show in the US in January Samsung demonstrated the W9600 mobile phone with a pico projector which uses TI’s DLP Pico WVGA chipset.
Nikon started shipping the Coolpix S1000pj digital camera in September, which includes a silicon backplane LCD projector.
On the component side, semiconductor lasers are being used as higher-power alternatives to LEDs for the illumination sources.
Mitsubishi Electric is targeting pico projectors with a red laser diode which it claims has the highest output power in the 638nm wavelength band. Laser diodes are used as well as LEDs as the light source in these projectors because they can project a wider range of colours compared to lamp-based projectors.
Lasers deliver higher output power than LEDs with less power consumption. They also enable focus-free operation because optical systems with great depth of field
can be used with laser beams.
Last year, Mitsubishi Electric launched a 638nm laser diode with 300mW output power.
This latest laser diode offers an even higher output power of 500mW, which could be used in high-luminous projectors of up to 60lm.
By comparison, LED-based projectors typically offer only about 10lm. Power efficiency is 32% at 500mW.
The ML520G72 laser diode can also be operated at a temperature range of -5 to 40°C when emitting 500mW continuous waves, and up to 50°C under pulse operation at a duty ratio of 25% or less and frequency of 50Hz or higher.
Embedded projectors will account for a tiny fraction of overall mobile device shipments through 2013.
“The growth potential for embedded pico projectors will be limited during the next few years due to challenges in areas including power consumption, size and manufacturing,” said iSuppli projection analyst Sanju Khatri. “As these issues are resolved, pico projectors will appear in many more mobile electronics devices.”
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