Liquavista is showing a new flexible electrowetting display prototype. They say that it's unbreakable. They wouldn't say when such displays can be commercialized though:
Seiko Epson has developed a new platform for e-paper display control that enabled high-speed refreshes for 300ppi resolution displays. The platform includes a display controller, application processor and power-supply chip and will be released in April 2011.
E Ink holdings reported net profit of $22.2 million in the third quarter of 2010 - a company record. Revenues were $171 million, the same as the second quarter. The company's margin are down - because e-paper panel prices have dropped recently.
According to E Ink, Amazon expects record e-reader shipments in the fourth quarter, and E Ink is expanding its capacity to meet clients' demand.
Phosphor has released a new E Ink watch - the World Time Curved, and we got one to review. The watch has got a "surf" (segmented) E Ink display that offers 24 time zones, several displays zones. The display is very similar to Phosphor's Digital-Hour watches (here's our review of those) - in fact E Ink tells us it's pretty much the same display. The new watch is thinner, though, at 9.3mm (you hardly notice this, to be fair).
The watch costs $150 and is now shipping from Phosphor's own shop (hopefully it'll arrive in Amazon.com soon as well). The Digital Hour watch is still available for 195$ - so the new watch is actually quite cheaper.
Chi Lin Technology (a subsidiary of the Chi Mei Group) has launched new e-tag products that use E Ink displays. The company has already start producing those e-tags, which range from 1.5" to 7" in size.
Chi Lin is also collaborating with Seiko-Epson to produce E Ink displays for e-readers and commercial applications.
There's an interesting (and funny) blog post by Evan Butterfield about his experiences with his Kindle and an iPad. He complains that the iPad he played was quickly covered with fingerprints, smears and smudges. His Kindle doesn't suffer from those (nor does mine).
I have talked with Sriram Peruvemba from E Ink, and he said that E Ink indeed offers a coating that is anti-fingerprint/smudge resistant. This protective coating is designed and supplied by E Ink themselves as an option to their customers. This coating goes on top of the E Ink Vizplex or Pearl imaging film, in the form of a protective layer.
There are reports that Nemoptic declared bankruptcy. That's a shame, they seemed to have very interesting technology. Hopefully someone will pick it up and continue development...
Nemoptic has developed the world's first display that combines a color OLED with a monochrome Bistable Nematic LCD (Binem). The idea is that you can choose whether you want to have an OLED displays, or a e-paper like display, depending on the application and lighting condition (this somewhat reminds us of Pixel-Qi displays).
Researchers from the University of Cincinnati and startup Gamma Dynamics have developed a new Electrofluidic display. The display can retain images without power consumption (like e-paper), has a >70% white reflectance and is fast enough for video. The idea is to use a colored fluid between the front and the backside of a reflective sheet. The space above and beneath this special sheet is similar in geometrPixel Structurey enabling the fluid to remain stationary in any position without an applied voltage.
The concept has been realized years ago, but the manufacturing process was only developed recently - in a collaboration between the Univ. of Cincinnati, Gamma Dynamics, DuPont and Sun Chemical.
Hitachi Displays is showing a new MEMS display prototype (2.5", 320x240), using Pixtronics' technology. They say that the power consumption is about half of a regular LCD, and it has 3 modes: transparent, reflectance (monochrome only) and semi-transmissive (a combination of the transparent mode and the reflectance mode, which is also monochrome only). The displays will be released towards the end of 2011 (or early 2011) in 10" or smaller sizes (for mobile devices).Â
Pixtronixs's technology is based around a MEMS shutter, backlight LED unit and a TFT driver element. Color is done via opening and shutting the MEMS shutter at a high speed and changing the amounts of the light from the LED backlight unit and natural light.
Two days ago we reported that Mirasol displays are delayed till early 2011. But that was not true: today we hear that Qualcomm is already producing panels and will start shipping them to OEMs this fall. But the release of devices that uses these displays is not expected before early 2011.
The 5.7" XGA displays will be used in devices that look more like a tablet than an e-reader. In the future they also plan to produce smaller displays for smartphones. They did not comment about the $2 billion Mirasol plant.