Small cap company Microvision has seen their stock price jump today after anonymous sources claimed that the upcoming Apple iPod Touch will include a Pico projector from the company.
The Pico projector, used in some phones and digital cameras, allows for owners to display their pictures on walls and other surfaces right from the device.
Sources claim the the addition of Pico projectors to the next-generation devices has been confirmed by channel checks in Taiwan.
Please be reminded this all speculation for the time being, but Microvision’s stock has jumped 19 percent so far on the rumor.
Apple is holding their annual September Media Event tomorrow.
Result for: digital cameras
PCMag is reporting today that members of their staff have followed the tech-heavy CES event by heading to the AVN Adult Entertainment event and noticed that the porn industry seems to have unanimously selected MicroUSB for their, um, charging needs.
In the past, the porn industry has helped push standards (see VHS vs. Beta, and more recently Blu-ray vs. HD DVD), and this latest trend could help give MicroUSB the push it needs to be the standard across most tech appliances. Currently MicroUSB is used by HTC and other phone manufacturers, and is the standard for most digital cameras.
Quoting PCMag: “It looks like many in the porn industry are getting on board as well, with a new crop of vibrators that can be charged from the comfort of your PC. From now on, you’ll only have to pack one cable for those long business trips.”
Result for: digital cameras
According to VideoBusiness, Blu-ray Disc set-top players continue to drop in price, and one analyst expects to see at least one $50 USD player on Black Friday.
Last year was dominated by off-brand, cheaper players such as those by Sylvania or Memorex but name brand, Internet-enabled players, most with video streaming from Netflix are becoming to be standard at under $200 USD.
Says Abt Electronics owner Jon Abt: “We are doing better than we initially expected, which is due to the price drops. The price drops were expected, but we didn’t think it would be this deep this quickly. BD Live players [most of which offer streaming movie services] are now available in sub-$200 models.”
Abt also says the company is selling 50 percent more BD units year-on-year.
More notably, NPD Group says 14 percent of all Blu-ray set-top sales this year are for sub-$200 models whereas last year that number was under 1 percent.
A few of the more feature-packed players available right now for under $200 are the Panasonic DMP-BD60 ($150), the Samsung BD-P1600 ($180) and the LG BD370 ($160), all of which offer Netflix, Amazon VOD, CinemaNow or Pandora.
“We’ve seen very strong growth in Blu-ray players this year. It has been a bright spot in a very gloomy industry landscape,” said Ross Rubin, NPD director of industry analysis. “Nearly all other electronics device categories have been down, such as digital cameras and MP3 players.”
As for Black Friday deals on BD players? Rubin says he can see a $50 USD BD player.
[More]>>
