Iljin to Sell Mobile Phone Projectors to Europe
A conceptual image of Iljins miniature beam projector for mobile phones. The firm said it has signed an MOU to sell the device in Europe from next year via France Telecom.
/ Courtesy of Iljin Display
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
A Korean firm is to export pocket-size beam projectors for mobile phones to Europe, making it possible for people to project pictures and video on to a screen or wall.
Iljin Display said Tuesday that its subsidiary Iljin DSP has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with France Telecom, one of the largest mobile service firms in Europe.
France Telecom will sell the miniature projectors under its Orange brand after conducting product quality tests and market surveys, Iljin said. The company signed a similar partnership with SK Telecom last month to sell the devices in South Korea as early as this year.
France Telecom is the biggest telecommunication company in France and one of the largest in the world. It currently has nearly 160 million customers worldwide.
The French firm's research lab in June picked Iljin's mini projector technology as one of six most promising mobile phone technologies for 2008, Iljin said.
``It means that they have verified the quality of our Nano Projector as well as its market potential,'' a company spokesman said. ``We are currently talking with other big telecom firms in Europe and North America, too,'' he said.
The Nano Projector is battery operated and can be connected to mobile phones via a standard data cable. It could be especially useful for watching mobile TV programs or making video calls, the company said. The company first demonstrated prototypes in 2006. It also has plans to mass-produce a coin-size projector module later this year, which can be built inside cell phones.
The idea of watching TV using a mobile phone and a beam projector is nothing new in the industry, and the competition has heated up this year.
Motorola has been doing the same research with Microvision, a U.S. firm specializing in the mini projector technology. They signed a deal last month with the goal to market an accessory device for Motorola handsets in late 2008 and an embedded device by 2009.
Traditional consumer electronics giants such as Toshiba, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics also have introduced compact-size projectors that weigh less than 1 kilogram and operate on batteries.
Iljin believes that its Nano Projector will be distinguished by its unique technology that can significantly save power consumption.
LCD Projectors usually contain three separate glass panels, one each for the red, green, and blue components of a video signal. But Iljin said its Single-LCD technology reduces it to a single panel, by switching the light signal between the three colors within one millisecond _ short enough to fool the human eye.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr
