Pico Projector News, Resources & Information

A few days ago Microvision announced their financial results for Q1 2013, and they reported that the company has only $3.3 million in cash. The company lost $3.7 million in the quarter, so obviously they needed to raise more money.

Happily, the company announced today that indeed they raised $5.85 million by selling 2.6 million shares plus warrants to buy 1.9 million shares to Crede CG III and other investors. That's good news for Microvision, but I think it may not be enough as it doesn't seem likely the company can become profitable by the end of 2013.

JVC Kenwood announced a new car navigation HUD (model MDV-737HUD), which will be released later on this month and will cost around ¥250,000 (over US$2,500), which includes the main LCD unit in the dashboard. The new HUD uses Syndiant's LCoS pico projector to display a 7" display in front of the driver.

This is the first product from Syndiant and JVC Kenwood's strategic alliance announced in late 2012. The pico projector backplane is made by Syndiant while the cell assembly is being done by JVC.

Microvision announced their financial results for Q1 2013. The company had $1.8 million in revenue (up slightly from $1.7 million in Q1 2012), and the net loss was $3.7 million (down from $9.8 million in Q1 2012).

If we look at the cash side, the cash used in Q1 was $3.5 million. The company has $3.3 million in cash and equivalents (and a backlog of $5.1 million). This means that they will have to raise more money, and soon.

The Lumitab is a 7" (1024x600) Android tablet that sports a WVGA DLP pico projector (854x480, 35 lumens). Other features include a 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory.

We still do not know when Promate will ship this tablet, and for what price.

Here's our monthly best-selling pico-projectors list for the beginning of May 2013. We're using data from Amazon.com, which seems to be selling the most wide range of pico projectors. This list does not include embedded modules in mobile phones or cameras.

1. Brookstone HDMI pocket projector ($299)
2. Aaxa P4X ($279)
3. Mini projector for iPhone/iPad ($99)
4. 3M iPhone projector sleeve ($85)
5. SVP PPP-03 ($89)
6. 3M MP225a ($176)
7. Aaxa P3 ($239) 
8. 3M Roku Streaming Projector ($249)
9. Optoma PK320 ($362)
10. Telstar iPhone projector sleeve ($105)

Panasonic's Micro-Viewer (LF-PJ525H) is a business-card-sized DLP pico projector (well, almost) that features 50 lumens and an HDMI input. It includes a battery but can also be powered via a USB connection.

AAXA's P2 Jr. is a DLP (probably 854x480) pico projector that features 55 lumens brightness, HDMI input (up to 1080p) and an internal media player (from USB or micro-SD cards) - that can play back 720p videos. The P2 Jr. uses AAXA's 4024 optical engine.

The P2 Jr. is now shipping from AAXA for $199.