Predictions

by Howard Baldwin

December 13, 2000 —

PITY THE POOR SALESPEOPLE, swirling on the leading edge of portable
technology. They were probably the first ones in many organizations to use "luggable"
computers more than a decade ago, and today, as a result, one of their arms is probably
longer than the other. Eventually, portable computers got smaller, but giving
presentations on them lost its flair, and the poor schmoes were forced to start
dragging LCD projectors with them.

But hurrah, there's hope. Two familiar trends are affecting the projector market,
according to Bill Coggshall, president of Pacific Media Associates, a market research
company covering the professional large-screen display industry. First, prices of
older, heavier projectors have come down about 25 to 30 percent. Second, new projectors
started shipping in the second and third quarters of 1999 that drop the typical weight
of projectors from 10 pounds to 5 pounds. Coggshall attributes the weight loss to the
use of technology from Texas Instruments Inc. called digital light processing (DLP),
which does with one chip what older liquid crystal diode (LCD) machines needed three
chips to do -- that is, project sharp, clear images for presentations.

Lightware Inc., a spinoff of projector manufacturer InFocus Systems Inc., is using
single optic LCD technology in its new 5.3-pound machine, Scout, priced at about
$3,000.

Fewer chips means fewer optics, which means less weight. Examples of lighter DLP
projectors include Plus Corp. of America's U2-870 SVGA and U2-1080 XGA, neither of
which weigh more than 6 pounds (by comparison, recent LCD projectors from Sony
Electronics Inc. and Proxima Corp. weigh in at 8.8 pounds and 8.1 pounds,
respectively). The cost is significant: $6,000 for the U2-870 and $9,000 for the U2-
1080.

Coggshall estimates worldwide projector sales will grow from 1 million units this
year to 1.5 million in 2003. At the same time, though, industry revenues will jump only
from $4.2 billion to $5.7 billion. "The growth in sales doesn't quite overcome the
price declines," says Coggshall. "If the manufacturers cut prices further, they could
get a swelling of demand that would more than exceed the price drop."

CIO