Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) (Palo Alto, CA) has decided to add light weight projectors to it line of office and computer peripherals products. The move follows Compaq's (Houston, TX) lead in this area and may have been influenced by plans to merge the two companies. Don't be surprised to see others follow soon - like Dell (Austin, TX), perhaps.

HP's new projectors, the xb31 and the sb21, are DLP-based units that will have estimated street prices of $3,699 and $2,499. The xb31 is a 1500 lumen, XGA resolution projector in a 3.5 pound package, while the sb21 offers 1000 lumens, SVGA resolution in a 2.2 pound box. Only PLUS Vision (Allendale, NJ) offers a lighter weight unit (2 pounds), with slightly lower brightness (800 lumens) and a $2,295 price tag (see Insight Media's Projection Industry Report - Spring 2002).

Many believe that higher volumes of projectors will drive prices down - and the entry of major computer players will help a lot. While HP has declined to confirm how many units it expects to sell, we suspect it is targeting sales of 100K units in the first year - otherwise, it would probably not be worth the effort to enter the market.

Insight Media has learned that the projectors are being built by Coretronics (formerly Optoma) in Taiwan. HP co-designed the units by contributing the optics, with Coretronics developing the electronics. Both worked on the industrial design.

Coretronics also makes Compaq's line of portable projectors. Compaq has just launched the iPAC MP4800, a 2000 lumen, XGA resolution DLP platform that retails for $4,499. This is also a very compact unit weighing only 5.8 pounds and is bright enough for conference room applications.

Opening up this enterprise market is a key objective of both projection system manufacturers and increasingly, computer companies. In the upcoming Projection Industry Summit Conference (PISC), there will be a session that will address this very issue. Titled, "Saturating the Enterprise Market: Cheap Ain't Enough", the session will examine the required feature sets and price points that projection products need to crack the high-volume enterprise market. Targeted presenters for this session include InFocus, Kayye Consulting, Compaq and HP. (See http://www.insightmedia.info/conagenda.htm)

HP will be offering its new projectors through its vast reseller and distributor network, mainly the PC channel, as well as directly from its web site starting April 15.

Chris Chinnock, chris@insightmedia.info

HP Product information: http://www.hp.com/digitalprojectors