Coming Soon? Microprojectors?

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Most cell phones now have the capability to take pictures, even shoot video. But, what if they had a tiny projector on board to beam it out on the nearest blank surface?

The New York Times had a feature story in its business section over the weekend predicting the near-future arrival of the microprojector that's getting a lot of buzz in the techno-blogosphere. I might as well buzz too.

The article, based on recent research from Insight Media, makes the bold claim that although no one is really selling microprojectors as of yet; sales will hit 30 million units by 2012.

Uh, folks, that's four years from now.

Insight Media calls them pico-projectors (I think I like microprojectors better. I hope someone thinks of a better name by 2012).

I'm not doubting this will come to market and eventually become popular. Business users will love it, enabling them to give private impromptu presentations to a clients over lunch (using a white table napkin perhaps as the screen). High school and middle school teachers will hate it when naughty teens use it to beam inappropriate videos at their white board during the middle of a lecture.

For cell phone users who check their email in the theater half way through "The Other Bolelyn Girl" or take a call in a really loud voice for everyone to hear in a two table radius at an otherwise quiet, intimate restaurant, be warned. When miniprojectors, pico-projectors, whatever you want to call them start getting bundled into mobile devices, people with that mentality are going to take obnoxious behavior to new depths.

Having trouble visualizing this. Check out Microvision's vision of the pico-projector.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio