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AAXA has announced their latest pico-projector, the L1 laser pico projector. This is a laser-driven LCoS projector (20 lumens, 800x600, up to 50" images) with a built-in media player. It's tiny: 4.2" x 2.1" x 0.8" and weighs just 170 grams (including the battery). It uses lasers, so it's focus-free and can project on curved surfaces. It has 160MB of internal memory, but can access USB disks, and a 2GB one is included. It supports movie, photo and audio files. It also supports office documents. AAXA say that the battery life is 90 minutes.

The L1 costs $599, and is ready for pre-order (should start shipping on February 12). Interestingly, AAXA admits that laser-diodes are available in very limited quantities, and supplies of the L1 are limited...

Digitimes reports that Sony plans to design and develop laser-beam-steering based pico-projector modules to be used in their digital cameras. Sony are in talks with Opus Microsystems, and might use their scanning mirror chips.

There's a new Chinese projector phone, but we do not know a lot about it, except through this funny advertisement. It's LCoS based (the projection module is made by iView), it supports audio/video/photo files, and also some documents. It's also a TV receiver. The phone is Quad-band with dual-SIM support. The phone is available now in Japan (at least according to the ad).

Oh, and it looks very similar to the Logic Wireless 150LGW... but not exactly the same.

UPDATE: It seems that I mistakenly thought this was Japanese... and it turns out to be a Chinese ad. Sorry!

Digitimes reports that handset makers in Taiwan are conservative about the outlook for projector phones. They estimate that sales of such phones will only reach several hundred thousand units in 2010.

Projector phones will only be a niche market segment - mostly because of privacy issues: most users are unlikely to show photos or videos in public places.

TI has announce version 2 of their DLP Pico Projector Development Kit. The new kit adds HDMI direct PC connection (there's also a DVI to HDMI adapter). It also includes a sync signal output and selectable high-speed DMD patterns with a variety of frame rates.

The v2 kit will sell for $349 and is available now from TI. Via Slashgear.

In CES 2010, Foryou showed a couple of pico-projector prototypes that use Syndiant's SYL2061 LCoS panel (announced in September 2009), supporting 1024x600 resolution. These were designed by Astri (an R&D technology development organization). Now we found a nice video on these pico-projectors (in Chinese), showing them in action, and even showing the projector module itself being assembled:

Asia Optical is set to launch new LED-based DLP pico-projector modules. They have already landed contract orders for embedded pico-projectors for digital cameras.

Asia Optical has been supplying pico-projector modules for Microvision's Show WX, and they expect to ship 200,000-250,000 projectors to microvision in 2010.