February 2011

E Ink announced their 4Q 2010 financial results. Sales hit a record of NT$9.8 billion (around $330 million) for the quarter and NT$25.2 billion (around $860 million) for the whole of 2010.

“In 2010 we achieved several key milestones,” said Dr. Scott Liu, Chairman, E Ink Holdings, Inc. “We tripled the number of ePaper displays as shipped in 2009 for the eReader market alone, launched two new ePaper display platforms, E Ink Pearl™ and E Ink Triton™ and we have had strong demand from the Tablet PC market for our FFS technology-based LCD products.”

E Ink has shipped over 20 million flexible SURF (segmented) displays - into applications ranging from wrist watches to smart cards to mobile phones to indoor signs. The company has won the 2011 FLEXI award from the FlexTech Alliance. The FLEXI Awards recognize significant accomplishments in R&D, innovative product development, and leadership in education within the flexible, printed electronics and displays industries.

E Ink's active-matrix flexible displays aren't commercialized yet - but the company is working with over a dozen companies towards that goal.

Update: We just got word from Bookeen. They say that everything is done on components that are available on the market with Bookeen's software - and they expect such performance to be available on the next-gen e-readers to appear soon. The power consumption, interestingly, is said to be equivalanet to a non-backlit LCD while running videos. The video, by the way, is a standard H.264 with no special treatment needed.

Bookeen's R&D team has achieved smooth video playback on an E Ink Pearl display. They are using a TI OMAP 3621 CPU (with its embedded software controller) and show a H.264 encoded video:

We don't know what are Bookeen plans here - whether they'd want to release a video-enabled reader or perhaps license their new technology?