Nicolas Mokhoff

EE Times

(04/26/2005 1:17 PM EDT)

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Kopin Corp. is banking on growth in the burgeoning mobile video market for future success after an arduous 20-year history that saw the company in many fields, some successful, some not.

At its 20th anniversary celebration here, Kopin (Taunton, Mass.) exhibited a slew of microdisplays for end-user applications from military head-mounted displays to consumer personal DVD eyewear.

``We want to be `Kopin Inside` for mobile video what `Intel Inside` was for PCs,`` said John Fan, president and chief executive, at the company`s Vision 2005 event held here.

At the event, Kopin touted its increasing penetration in mobile video. Mobile video services alone are expected to generate $5.4 billion in annual revenues in the U.S. by 2009, or approximately 15 percent of wireless data revenues, according to industry analyst firm In-Stat/MDR.

``We see high-resolution micro-displays play a key role in driving the industry, along with wireless broadband, increasing storage capacity and abundant content,`` said Fan.

Kopin`s microdisplays are also proliferating in consumer applications such as near-to-eye personal displays (PDs), a market projected to reach $1 billion by 2008, according to a 2004 report by market research firms McLaughlin Consulting Group and Insight Media.

In one consumer application, visitors to the recently opened 2005 World Exposition in Aichi, Japan, use microdisplay PDs to take an interactive mixed-reality ride to five separate habitats within the Hitachi Group`s pavilion. Visitors see the animals through an AdventureScope, a binocular viewer, appear as lifelike computer-generated images moving inside dioramas.

AdventureScope, manufactured by Icuiti (Rochester, NY), incorporates Icuiti`s optical system, Kopin`s custom color version of its 0.97-inch-diagonal 1280x1024-resolution CyberDisplay 1280M, and interactive software from Ray Corp.

``AdventureScope needed ultra high-resolution displays that could readily fit into the lightweight, compact binoculars,`` said Paul Travers, president of Icuiti. ``Only Kopin has the technology to provide the size, resolution, clarity, quantity and reliability Hitachi required in these displays.``

The CyberDisplays used in AdventureScope are among the 15 million micro-displays Kopin has shipped for use in a wide variety of applications, including camcorders, digital still cameras, mobile video eyewear and military products.

In addition to camcorders, microdisplays for the latest military application were displayed.

Among the most interesting military uses is the Auxiliary Targeting Viewer (ATV), an integrated head-mount display developed for the thermal imaging market. It is designed as a high-resolution, monocular sight for covert reconnaissance, target acquisition and weapons firing.

The ATV, which is tethered to the rifle, gives the soldier an ``over the wall`` view of battlefield conditions from just moving his rifle to ``see`` around the corner or over a wall without the soldier being detected from a protected position.

Although unprofitable in recent quarters, Fan is optimistic Kopin will be profitable the first quarter this year. The company has no debt and $110 million in cash, according to Fan.

Last year, Kopin reported $87.4 million in sales from two main product lines, CyberDisplay microdisplays and heterojunction bipolar transistors. Both product lines stem from the company`s proprietary wafer-engineering technology that allows combining and engineering dissimilar semiconductor materials to create small format flat panel displays technology and gallium arsenide HBTs.