Syndiant gets $3.5 Million to make ultra-portable projector technology
Syndiant Inc is a Dallas based fabless semiconductor company, founded in 2004 by Mark Harward, Karl Guttag and Tupper Patnode. It designs “light modulating panels for high resolution displays used in ultra-portable projectors small enough to embed in a cell phone.” In other words, it enables the “customers to design the world’s smallest projectors which can be small enough to fit on a dime“.
The $3.5 Million in funding is from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund towards its VueG8 (read as “ViewGate”). The Dallas Business Journal says:
Dallas-based Syndiant said the funding will be released in two phases. During the first phase, Syndiant will receive enough funding to hire six engineers, while also increasing the company’s patent filing activity on a global scale. The funding also will allow the North Dallas company to work with the Center for Integrated Circuits and the Materials Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas.
The Texas Emerging Technology Fund is valued at $200 million and was originally launched in June of 2005 to help the area commercialize innovations and to create private sector companies that can increase high-value jobs in the area while simultaneously growing the amount of research projects that benefit Texas institutions of higher education.
Last year in September, Syndiant was named as a finalist for the Emerging Company Horizon Award, presented by the Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC) - a non-profit organization founded by MCI, Nortel Networks, Fujitsu and Rockwell International. In January, the big show CES provided Syndiant an opportunity to show off its first VueG8 product: SYL2010.
Its light modulating panel uses Liquid Crystal On Silicon provides SVGA/WVGA resolutions (854 x 600 pixels), capable of running off a battery. Besides using 0.18 micron wafer fabrication, it supports either LED or Laser illumination to enable pico or nano projectors, thereby providing a highly cost-effective solution.
Pacific Media predicts explosive growth in the worldwide market for tiny, battery-powered projectors from over 2.5 Million units in 2010 to over 17 Million units in 2012. Dr William Coggshall, the founder of PMA says:
“Pico projectors came of age during the fourth quarter of 2008, with demand far outstripping supply. While it is too early to know for sure, our survey provides the first real consensus of manufacturers of pico projectors, optical engines, and components. Among myriad other detailed findings, these manufacturers expect that by 2012 showing video would be the leading application by far, followed by showing photos and gaming.”
Although competing with the likes of Texas Instruments, Aurora, Microvision, Himax and Displaytech, its edge is in using the mature liquid crystal assembly making it cheaper than using MEMs (DLP and 2-D Beam Steering) processing. Remember that Microvision showed a standalone single mirror based pico-projector at CES 2008 and recently announced that it had won a contract to develop HD prototype display engine for the US Army.
There is a lot of promise here. Taking costs and power requirements into account, it may well go into a good standalone device without being crammed into a smartphone (thereby compromising on features). Consumers seem comfortable carrying multiple devices. The emergence of the anemic laptops (nee netbooks), holds promise for integrating pico projectors into these for greater value-addition.
Interesting to see how this plays out.
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