Texas Instruments Inc. of Dallas has announced that first-quarter shipments of its Digital Light Processing subsystems were up more than 250 percent from the same period in 1999. It expects to double last year's total shipments -- 150,000 -- in 2000. The technology is based on the company's Digital Micromirror Device, an array of up to 1.31 million hinged mirrors.

Texas Instruments attributed the demand to the development of portable projectors, particularly so-called microportable projectors that weigh less than 6 lb. TFC.Net Corp., an Austin, Texas-based market research company, reported that units based on Digital Light Processing have a nearly total share of the microportables sector.