Never mind large flat-screen TVs, electronics outfits appear to be putting their money into projections from devices as tiny as mobile phones.

Pico projectors are still rare, but Microvision, Texas Instruments and 3M think there is “gold in them their hills”. Microvision wants to embed the technology in a range of consumer electronics including cameras and phones. It said that in five-years all phones will all have projectors.

Texas Instruments claims that everyone was excited by pico projectors and Ovum's Jonathan Yarmis claims pico technology has a huge potential because it solves the problem of video viewing on tiny mobile screens. But you still need to watch them in the dark and hold them if you want to watch a long movie. Even then the picture is not that great.