According to Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is working on 3-D displays for MIT's Media Lab, Ostendo's advantage and the key to its 3-D capability is its resolution. The Retina display on Apple Inc.'s
iPhone, for example, has about 300 dots per inch, Ostendo's chips are at about 5,000 dots per inch.
Ostendo, which says it has several opportunities with major handset manufacturers, expects the first 2-D projector unit to be in the hands of consumers before the summer of 2015. With a lens attached, it will be less than 0.5 cubic centimeters, roughly the size of the camera in the
iPhone. It also expects to begin manufacturing the second version of the chip, with 3-D capability, in the second half of 2015. The cost to the consumer should be about $30 a chip, Ostendo estimates.