August 2009

DisplaySearch forecasts that total e-paper display market will grow to 1.8 billion units and $9.6 billion in revenues in 2018, from 22 million units and $431 million in revenues in 2009, for a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 41% for revenues and 64% for units.

E-book displays currently account for the majority of e-paper revenues. Nearly all e-book devices currently in the market use E Ink's electrophoretic display technology, with a small number--such as Fujitsu's FLEPia--using cholesteric LCD (liquid crystal display) technology. Other electrophoretic display suppliers SiPix and Bridgestone have announced that they will also commercialize e-book displays.

There's a new report by the Cleantech Group that says that e-readers are green. In fact, according to the projected sales of e-readers in 2009 and 2012 could reduce co-2 emissions by 10.9 million tons.

Their analysis says that one year of use could offset the emissions made by manufacturing and distribution (and operation). Each following year of use could actually be preventing the release of 370 pounds of carbon dioxide per user (assuming individuals buy about 22.5 books a year).

The report mentions that using an e-paper based reader (currently almost all of these are E Ink based) is best - because of the low power consumption.

Plastic Logic are working towards a flexible E Ink display based E--Reader, and they say that they will start making the displays soon. The reader itself is expected to be available at the beginning of 2010, for about the same price as the Kindle.

Even though the display is flexible, the product itself will not be - as people do not really want a flexible display - they are afraid it will be easily destroyed... So this will be a regular E Reader, with a plastic based display.

AU Optronics says it hopes to start making color e-Paper by the end of 2010. As we reported a few days ago, AUO will start shipping monochrome (6" to 9") e-Paper by 3Q 2009.

Sony has officially announced the two new E-Readers, the PRS-300 and PRS-600. The PRS-200 is a budget device, priced at 199$, which is the cheapest e-reader available.

Sony also says they will soon launch a reader with wireless (Wi-Fi) connections.