First, sorry for being away so long.  Some family and other matters took me a way and I fell out of the habit of posting.  I am going to try to have at least couple of posts up a week.

My “Soothsayer” series started back in December 2011 when Microvision released an 8-K a very trasparent response to this blog.  In Microvision’s Dec. 19th 2011 8-K they stated ““In the coming weeks we intend to provide a series of posts that discuss direct green lasers in more detail, as well as other business updates. Stay tuned!”

Well, it has been 19 weeks since Microvision’s 8K and there has been pretty much silence from them on “more details.”  Microvision has had plenty of opportunities to add “more details” in the last 5 months but has chosen not to.  They say a “slip in Washington is when you accidentally tell the truth” well maybe Microvision did that today.

In a way, Microvision finally broke the silence with an article today in an April 30th Technology Review article with Lance Evans (a director of business development at Microvision) stating, “Green lasers alone are $200 each now.” Remember this is probably for a green laser that supports on the order of a 15 lumen projector and has a wavelength that is too short (too blue) to be used in a typical projector and it not very efficient in terms of lumens per Watt. These are lasers that are a best useable in a car HUD display and not a batter powered cell phone or hand held projector.

Back in December 2011 Microvision’s 8K stated, “DGLs will be much cheaper than synthetic green lasers at introduction.”  How does this fit with DGL’s costing $200 today? 

The article does day that “Evans expects that costs should fall to a tenth of current levels by the end of this year,” but note the word “expects” is corporate speak for “believe, wish, hope, or dream” because you generally can’t hold them legally accountable for an “expectation.”  What other than a wish causes the direct green laser cost road map to drop from $200 now to one-tenth that cost or $20 in less than 7 months?  Are there people lined up to buy lasers first at $200, then $100, then $50 say to support a 15 lumen projector?  None of this makes any business sense.

Even if Mr. Evans “expectations” come true, and DGL drop by 10x in less than 7 months to $20 by the end of the year (really for 2013 production), is this really a viable business?   By comparison, there are 200 lumen LED base projectors on the market today and the cost of the red, green, and blue LEDs combined cost less than $20 today.   For a 15 lumen LED projector today, the LEDs are more like $3 for the RGB set.  For a pico projector to make it into a cell phone, the cost to the cell phone maker of the whole projector including electronics has to be on the order of $25 or less (just ask any cell phone maker, I have asked many).  You can even come close with even a $10 DGL, no less 20, when you factor in the cost of everything it takes to make a projector including optics and electronics.

I’m a long term believer that eventually all projectors and in fact a vast number of other products will be using lasers.   It is just going to take more than 2 year for the brilliant people at the laser manufactures to figure out how to make the direct green lasers at a cost point that will lead to mass adoption.