Hologram Projectors: Coming Soon to a Smartphone Near You

When Coachella’s organizers decided to have a hologram of late rapper Tupac appear onstage during the 2012 dates of the music festival, they used a high-powered projector to create the uncanny "performance." Now, in 2014, a startup called Ostendo is taking that kind of technology and shrinking it down until it’s small enough to fit inside your iPhone.

Ostendo is working on computer chips capable of projecting 3D holograms that will be tiny enough to fit inside a smartphone. The Carlsbad, Calif.-based company, which has raised $90 million from Peter Thiel and venture capitalists, is already prepping 2D project units for sale in 2015. But the company wants to start manufacturing a version of the chip with 3D capabilities for the second half of 2015, with an expected price of $30 a pop. The chip, which the Wall Street Journal describes as the size of a Tic Tac, can project an image on up to 48 inches of display; multiple chips working together can project far larger and more complicated images. Read more...