While much discussion has rightly focused on touchscreen-based display technology – and, of course, the “experience” it enables as an input/output mechanism – there’s always something coming down the pike.
In this case, that something may well be digital projectors, either standalone modules or units embedded into handheld devices such as mobile phones, that can liberate visual content from the diminutive dimensions of handheld screens.
Whether that means PowerPoint presentations or video-conferencing for enterprise or gaming, social-networking or TV/video for consumers, one market research firm said such products could reach market within a year.
While current trends are easily observable – certainly, handset displays are on average getting larger, brighter, higher resolution and more colorful – the rise of multimedia content points to obvious limitations.
“One problem people face is how to increase the display’s real estate on the handset while maintaining adequate input technology,” said Femi Omoni, analyst at IMS Research. “The iPhone achieves both screen size and an input mechanism without growing the size of the phone.”
Outside the box
Other devices combine a touchscreen and a QWERTY keypad while still others use dual-screen designs to exceed the bounds of handset design.
Technologists who are thinking out of the box are working on a variety of solutions and one is to get the display image and content literally out of the box by projecting it onto a nearby surface.
“It’s a really good differentiator,” Omoni said.
Here’s a hot tip: Redmond, Wash.-based Microvision will demo some of its products at CTIA Wireless 2008 this week. And last year the company announced a partnership with Motorola Inc. to develop a pico projector display for mobile applications as well as a deal with “an Asian consumer electronics manufacturer” to develop a standalone pico projector for mobile phones.
Microvision’s PicoP is a proprietary display engine that “enables an ultra-miniature video projector capable of producing color rich, high resolution, large images, but small and low-power enough to be embedded directly into mobile devices such as cell phones,” according to the company’s Web site. Other applications include personal media players, gaming devices, laptops and DVD players. Microvision also makes displays for automobiles and “wearable displays” – image-conveying eyeware – for military applications.
Writing on the wall
And Microvision, according to Omoni, has competition from companies spread across the globe, from the United Kingdom to China. Another American contender: Texas Instruments Inc., which also is exhibiting at CTIA Wireless 2008 this week. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is said to be exploring the technology, according to the analyst.
The upside of standalone pico projectors (aka nano- or micro-projectors) is that they’re not reliant on a handset for power, Omoni said. They’re likely to be made available as a consumer-electronics offering, outside the current carrier retail channel. The downside: yet another device to carry.
Certain technological advances have made embedded projectors increasingly ready for market, the analyst said. The crucial areas of innovation are the light source and how the module processes images. Both factors affect the potential retail cost of devices that sport the projectors.
Embedded projectors are likely to reach the market in a limited number of fairly expensive handsets, Omoni predicted, given the mobile industry’s experience with adding a camera to the handset. Camera modules are relatively expensive – given that carriers and vendors decided to add them as revenue generators, only to see them largely ignored by end users. That mistake will not be repeated, Omoni said.
The familiar hurdle, as always, will be handset-based power limitations. Barring the commercial introduction of new power sources, current work focuses, as usual, on power management and efficiency.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to power,” said Omoni.
