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| http://www.gilder.com/
| Issue 279.0/January 12, 2007
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HEADLINES:
- The Week / A New Vision for Microvision
- Friday Feature / Gilder: Human Creativity and Intelligence
- Friday Blogger Bonus / What a Complicated Mess!
- Readings /
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The
Week /
A New Vision for Microvision
Gilder Technology Report’s Charlie Burger: By combining its proprietary
silicon micromirror with modulated light sources, Microvision (MVIS)
enables higher-intensity, finer-grained imagers and displays using a fraction
of the size and power of rival systems. Though it possesses the single most
potent display technology in the industry, Microvision has for years been
foundering in uncharted waters, steered by a Magellan management pursuing too
many difficult applications too early.
Now,
new management fresh out of General Electric (GE) appears to be
steadying the ship. After a decade filling key marketing, operations, and
product development roles at GE, Alexander Tokman jumped to Microvision a year
ago July as operations chief. Quickly gaining the CEO spot last January, he
brought in marketing and sales chief, Ian Brown, and R&D head, Sid
Madhaven, with a combined 26 years of experience at GE.
Finally, Microvision becomes as focused as its photons
The
key goal of the new team is development of an integrated photonics module (IPM)
or microprojector to be used as a common display engine in its new products.
Small enough to integrate into a cellphone or iPod, the microprojector will
include the silicon micromirror (about a square millimeter in size) and light
sources, electronics to wiggle the mirror and modulate the light, a controller,
and memory.
Three
separate beams of red, blue, and green light from either LEDs (light emitting
diodes) or semiconductor lasers shine on the mirror. Gimballing on two axes, it
flickers to project 30 million pixels a second onto a surface such as a wall.
Even though the mirror reflects one pixel at time in raster fashion, it does it
so quickly that our brains “see” a static image or continuous movie. To produce
different colors during the scan, the light sources are modulated to emit beams
at varying combinations of intensities.
In addition to functioning as a projector, Microvision’s display technology can be turned into a scanner or near-field camera that works well over distances that are about the same as those for a barcode reader. In this case, the light sources that bounce off the moving mirror are used to illuminate an object. A detector receives the scattered light energy and converts it to electrical signals stored in the appropriate memory locations based on the corresponding pixel position, thereby reproducing the object. Because the time the beam remains on any given spot is a very short 20 nanoseconds, there’s virtually no motion blur.
Tokman is focusing on three specific product areas: (1) miniprojectors, including embedded projectors inside cellphones and standalone models that will work with portable devices; (2) head-up displays (HUDs), now making their way into luxury cars, that shine an image directly in front of the driver, just above the steering wheel, displaying information about the engine, weather, navigation, and traffic; (3) eyewear that creates immersive experiences for gamers and movie buffs, giving them a virtual screen equivalent to an 80- to 100-inch display.
Management
is focusing on potent markets. By 2008, some 80–90 percent of all cellphones—some
800 million shipped that year—are expected to have mega-pixel cameras and/or be
capable of receiving broadband video. Nokia (NOK) is already looking at
technologies to integrate projectors into mobile devices, and several large
consumer electronics companies are reportedly developing microprojectors based
on very small display technologies. And head-up displays are becoming popular
in cars for safety, for convenience, and as a differentiator for luxury models.
Automakers installed several hundred thousand units last year and could
increase that to 4 million units a year by 2010.
But
when the consumers and manufacturers arrive, will Tokman be there to meet them?
…
Learn
more, by reading Charlie Burger’s complete Microvision analysis. Logon with
your GTR subscriber ID at www.Gildertech.com
now.
-- RELATED
NEWS --
Hands-on
With Microvision's Itty Bitty Projector
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/08/hands-on-with-microvisions-itty-bitty-projector/
CES 2007:
Microvision to Debut Miniature Projector
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/ces-2007-microvision-to-debut-miniature-projector-226157.php
|
George Gilder’s talent for discovering companies
with superior |
Friday
Feature
/ Gilder:
Human Creativity and Intelligence
Excerpts
from the Gilder Technology Report subscriber-only message board on www.Gildertech.com.
GTR Subscriber (1/8/07): I think Microsoft’s Xbox 360 could be an
extraordinary development.
George Gilder (1/8/07): You are right. As I wrote last week, Microsoft
(MSFT) has a larger 360-degree media-center IP-TV, gaming lead than most
analysts understand. Gates put it all together this time. The company may
finally be a buy again. But you guys have it covered with Sigma (SIGM).
The other video winner is Adobe's (ADBE) Macromedia Flash, with its
iTube ubiquity. And then there are the Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) that
offer new opportunities for security on the edge for all these new devices.
GTR
Subscriber (1/8/07): Today’s WSJ editorial on Coca Democracy (concerning drug trade in
Bolivia) got me thinking.
It seems as if US drug policy uses a supply-side effort
to fight the drug war. (In other words,
the US fights the drug war by going against the suppliers, coca farmers, in
South American countries). The article
suggests that the drug war should be fought from the demand side (drug users in
the US), not the supply side.
George Gilder (1/8/07): US quotas and restrictions on sugar and other
Latin American farm products are far more effective in a negative way than are
our flailings at coca growers. Our pols are afraid to crack down here so we
crack down abroad, where the ACLU is less active. Meanwhile we comprise the
world's largest market for cocaine, propagating a powerful signal that reaches
into every nook and cranny of world agriculture.
GTR Subscriber (1/8/07): Any comments on Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The
Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing?
George
Gilder (1/8/07): If you average out all the good performing funds with the guys who went
broke and closed down, you will get mediocre results.
A
key insight of Information Theory is that random white noise and creative
entropy are
indistinguishable. Entrepreneurship and investment are creative acts. The fact
that a long
pattern of prices resembles a random walk (or a fractal for that matter) is
irrelevant. It merely means that a series of stock prices reflects human
intelligence, which produces unexpected results. "Creativity always comes
as a surprise to us"--in other words it is a high entropy phenomenon and
resembles a random walk, but it is not random.
To
read more posts by George Gilder and the GTR subscribers, logon with
your subscriber ID at www.Gildertech.com.
|
The Gildertech Blog, http://blog.gildertech.com/ | Logon now to see what’s new. |
Friday Blogger Bonus / What a Complicated Mess!
Bret Swanson (1/9/07): The proliferation of government sanctioned
savings accounts is out of control -- IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, Keoughs, 529s,
state college funds....Stop already! Who has time to manage all these accounts,
with all their different rules and regulations? Just eliminate taxes on capital
and let us pool our investments tax-free for all our long term needs -- from
retirement to education to entrepreneurial business activity.
America is a wealthy country and getting wealthier all the time. U.S. household
assets now total some $67 tillion yielding a net worth of $54 trillion. A
much better approach was suggested by George Gilder last week:
avoid any "solutions" to Social Security that rely on tax increases
that choke off today's opportunities in an overly precise and futile effort to
balance the accounting ledgers in the year 2082 or whatever. Instead, pursue
the opportunities of global growth. Only this strategy will produce the new
incomes, asset gains, and additional borrowing power necessary to allow us to
pay for our own retirements and health care.
Check
out the Disco-tech blog:
http://www.disco-tech.org/2007/01/rube_pozens_herky_jerky_pin_ma.html
____________________________________
Readings /
Ten
Laws of the Telecosm Redux
http://www.forbes.com/finance/2007/01/09/telecosm-jdsu-intel-pf-soapbox-in_gg_0109soapbox_inl.html
iPhone – This Changes Everything, with link to George Gilder- interview at Inside Digital Media
http://www.madmaxmedia.com/wordpress/?p=79
Forbes: These
Numbers Don’t Figure
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0129/021.html?partner=globalnews_newsletter
Pogue: Apple Waves Its Wand At The Phone
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/technology/11pogue.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Has
Jobs Lost His Magic?
http://www.edn.com/article/CA6406616.html?partner=enews&nid=2019&rid=2052959400
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