January 2011

Back in November 2010 we reported that Plastic Logic received a 'major' investment from Russia's RUSNANO. Today we learned that this is major indeed - the total investment will be $700 million (!) - which will be used to build a mass-production factory for thin, light and flexible plastic-based e-paper displays. Those displays will be used in Plastic Logic’s first commercial consumer electronics product, a next-generation electronic reader for business that is currently under development. This isn't the Que e-reader which was canceled in 2010.

The new factory will be built in Zelenograd, Russia, and is scheduled to begin production in 2013/2014 - and will be able to produce hundreds of thousands displays monthly. This will be Plastic Logic's second factory (the first one was opened in 2008 in Dresden, Germany). Russia hopes that this move will establish a commercial plastic electronics industry.

Update: This is now official, Samsung issued a press release. We still do not know the financial details...

There are reports that Samsung has acquired Liquavista. It's not official, and we do not know the financial details, but it seems that Samsung is already listed as Liquavista's corporate parent at the Netherlands' chamber of commerce.

LiquaVista raised $9.5 million in early 2010, so this doesn't seem to be an "emergency sale" - and is probably good news for the company and the technology. We also know that Samsung stopped making E Ink panels in August 2010 - so perhaps they were already considering the move to Liquavista's electrowetting displays. Here's an interview we conducted with Liquavista's CTO back in March 2010.

Bridgestone were showing their QR-LPD (Quick Response Liquid Powder Display) displays at CES. There are reports that the display is very dim and washed out, and the refresh rate is slow. They do support color, though. Here's a short video:

Vivitek is also showing two e-readers using the QR-LPD displays (made by Delta Electronics) one is a 8.2" and the other is a large 13.1" display.

There are some reports that researchers from BAE Systems suggest using E Ink displays to camouflage tanks (they call it e-camouflage). The idea is that you place a flexible display on the tank and using video cameras on the back you can display what's behind the tank. If you do it all around the vehicle - it becomes sort of invisible. They say that this technology can be ready in 5 years.

This is actually an old idea. I remember there were discussions of using flexible OLED displays (and this was back in 1999 or so...).

Here's a nice video from CES showing the new color E Ink display as used in the Hanvon reader, and also a color Mirasol display. It's nice to compare them:

Here's a nice video showing 3 different Point-of-Purchase (POP) samples that use E Ink SURF (segmented) displays:

Update: iRiver has a new e-reader too, and it too sports a high-resolution display. iRiver says that the Story HD is the highest-resolution 6" E Ink e-reader.

Hanvon have announced a new 9.7" e-reader, the WISEreader E920. They say that it is the first one to use a new E Ink display offering 200dpi - the highest resolution e-reader display yet. Check out this photo showing how the compares to a regular E Ink display:

Check out this video showing an e-reader (E Ink) platform based on Freescale's i.MX508 chipset. The page refresh rates are great compared to what's available on the market today.

A couple of weeks ago E Ink and Freescales announced that they will jointly develop a color e-reader platform based on the same i.MX508 chipset.

Qualcomm's new Mirasol plant was rumored for a long time, and now it's official: Qualcomm will build a new Mirasol plant in Taiwan in a $1 billion investment. The new plant will make small and medium sized Mirasol displays.