One of the few booths at MWC that was about large displays, was Broomx, who we reported on last year, who had a small booth in the 4YFN area and a small demo room at the main show.
The company is based in Spain and last year showed us a design for a dual projector room-scale projection concept that it was working on that it calls ‘virtual room’. Now the company has got past that stage and is selling a real product which is a projector with an extremely wide angle lens that is used to illuminate a room. The design has been simplified now and there is just a single projection engine.
The company initially targeted the hospitality market and expected some hotels to sign up for a monthly contract to supply content for the projectors, which can exploit the very wide angle to project on all the walls of an environment, creating what we would call a kind of ‘entry level CAVE’. The projector engine is a lamp-based unit with 2,500 Ansi lumens of brightness and with a lens that can give 220º of coverage. In the very dark environment, it was surprisingly usable, despite the big area of the images. It is estimated that a single unit can support anything from 7m² to 70m². Broomx can configure dual systems for larger spaces.
Broomx is developing a lot of content but has found a wide range of applications in health and wellbeing as well as museums and universities. The company told us that it has sold 20 units. It has also had interest from car companies that would be interested in using the system as a configurator.
Future
The aim was to sell to hotels, initially, so the company charges €6,000 for the initial installation and then we a €575 per month fee for content provision. After two years, customers can buy the system for another €6,000 payment as this is a leasing arrangement. As an alternative, the company will rent for €1,000 per month.
