Brace for the Invasion of the Nano Projectors?

Since the ancient days of Star Wars, way back in 1977, over thirty years ago, in a world that seems now to be far, far away, people dreamed of the nano projector. Now, to be fair Princess Leah was actually recording on R2’s nano, holographic projector; but the seeds of nano projector technology were planted in that famous scene before R2-D2 and C3PO were jettisoned from the rebel spacecraft.

Fast forward to 2007 and nano projector technologies are no longer a fantasy of a million plus nerds, no no, nano projectors are here and coming to a cell phone near you.

Imagine being able to project whatever you wanted from your cell phone onto a desk, wall or nearby surface. Hundreds of thousands of old people with blurry and bad vision would instantly be liberated and more information could be displayed on cell phone screens, making internet browsing far superior than the current piece-meal experience most people cope with. Yes, nano projectors are the great hope of the future - or are they?

If you just read the last paragraph and thought that it might be over-hyping nano projector technology a little, you might not be in minority. It seems difficult to imagine nano projectors invading our lives. Will people really need nano projectors embedded into their cell phones to make life easier? Will people be willing to replace their nano projector lamps and how much will these nano projector lamps cost? Undoubtedly, there are a lot of unknown factors and a huge amount of risk for any investor/ developer of nano projectors.

However, the huge risk factors haven’t deterred France Telecom from signing a memorandum of understanding with South Korean developer Iljin. FT will offer their customers cell phones with miniature pocket beam projectors included. France Telecom plans to sell the mobile avec nano projector under their Orange brand label. No date has been set for the release of these mobiles.