The Pebble E Ink watch team posted a video showing the upcoming Kickstarter-funded watch user interface (on a prototype watch with an E Ink display):
Ynvisible (based in Portugal) is developing flexible transparent electrochromic displays (materials that change color when electricity is applied). The company is already producing some displays in low volume (with manual assembly), and were kind enough to send us a sample gift card showing off their displays.
So first of all, the display is quite impressive. They use a material that changes from being transparent to being blue, and indeed when you press a small button on the card it displays words in blue (love in several languages). When off, it looks exactly like a normal piece of plastic - totally transparent and bendable (flexible).
E Ink said it expects its second half revenues to grow significantly from the first half - not just because of season factors - they expect new e-reader products in north america to re-ignite the e-reader market. E Ink also revealed that Rakuten (a Japanese e-commerce and internet company that owns Kobo) sold 100,000 e-readers in Japan since the launch last month.
E Ink plans to focus on non e-reader applications in the future to improve profitability. They expect demand for e-tags for convenience stores and supermarkets to "explode" next year.
E Ink has bought AUO's shares (82.7%) in Sipix Technology (STI) - the maker of micro?cup technology based electrophoretic e-paper displays. E Ink also intends to buy the remaining STI shares. The whole deal is worth about NT$1.5 billion (about $50 million USD) and will should close during Q4 2012.
Flexible solar Sipix prototype
Sipix's technology is pretty similar to E Ink's. It's not clear whether E Ink intends to continue producing Sipix displays or whether they bought them just for the IP and to remove a competitor. Sipix has been used in some e-readers (for example the Cybook Orizon), and apparently has some advantages over E Ink in the touch technology and refresh rate. E Ink is of course the clear e-paper e-reader leader with over 90% market share.
