Last year, after CES, I wrote a Display Daily discussing picoprojectors. At the time I had been told picoprojectors would become available in the second half of 2008. That has become true, at least in limited volumes. For example, you can buy the Nextar projector at Hammacher Schlemmer for $299.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

At CES, I talked to Robert Sayles, vice president of Nextar. He said the projector had shipped to Hammacher Schlemmer and a few other retailers in limited quantity last October and volume shipments to more retailers will start later this quarter. He didn’t know much about sell through rates for the projector, although he did say one retailer had reordered, indicating they had sold the entire initial shipment.

Nextar is not a projector manufacturer, it is a division within Tofasco, a Chinese trading company whose website says it has "the ability to marry North American and European market needs and Chinese manufacturing abilities." Tofasco got its big break when it started to sell the quad-folding chair, like the one I carry in the back of my car. Nextar is their division that deals with mobile electronics.

Sayles recognizes that the $299 price is not sustainable and he expects it to drop to $199 in short order, also in line with what I had said last year. He said if a retailer wanted to order 20,000 units, he could sell them the Nextar projector at a wholesale price that would allow them to retail it at $199. Yet Sayles knew little about the projector–the unit I saw at CES wasn’t even working. In particular, he didn’t know whose light engine was in it, although he promised to try to find out for me. The only thing he did know, in a technical sense, was that it wasn’t iPod compatible because Nextar hadn’t licensed the needed Apple connector.

I talked to several other companies involved in picoprojectors, from component manufacturers through vendors like Nextar. They all said the same thing: 2-hour battery life, 10 lumens output and VGA resolution, except for DLP-based projectors that had half-VGA. Some had a built in MP3 player, some had a built in cell phone and some, like the Nextar, required an external video source. Some companies offered two different versions, like WowWee. Their HVGA DLP-based Cinemin projector is currently available in a version without a built in media player for $299. The version with the built in media player will be available later this year at the same price, and a larger version, with higher output and an iPod dock, is in the works. I only saw a mock-up of that system, but it was about a 4-inch cube with an iPod dock on the front, a projection lens on the back and will have its own internal battery.

This multiplicity of projectors with similar specifications extends to the component level as well. One projector module developer told me they had at least two sources for every component, including the LCoS microdisplay and the red, green and blue lasers.

All this sounds like a formula for a high-volume, low-margin business to me. If the volumes are high enough, this can be a profitable type of business. But to me, this seems like breathtaking speed for a change from a technology driven business to a commodity market. No one even knows yet if consumers will be willing to buy the 10’s of millions of picoprojectors necessary to support this type of industry model.

Read all about picoprojectors, along with reports on other small displays, in the upcoming issue of Mobile Display Report (due to be published January 15th). Larger displays at CES, including extensive reporting on upcoming consumer 3D displays, will be covered in the next issue of Large Display Report (due to be published February 2nd).