June 2018

E Ink Holdings' president, Johnson Lee, says that demand for electronic shelf labels (ESL) displays is high - and in 2018 the company expects ESL displays to surpass e-reader displays in terms of area shipments.

This is very good news for EIH as the e-reader market has stagnated for years - and it is rather surprising for many as we have all been used to consider e-readers to be the main market for e-paper displays.

Lenovo and Intel demonstrated a new ultra portable laptop, that has an 7.9" E Ink display instead of the regular keyboard (and in addition to the Full-HD 7.9" LCD). The touch E Ink can be used as a keyboard, and probably has some other functions as well.

This design idea will, reportedly, be used in its Yoga Book 2, which will be released by the end of 2018. That's all the information we have so far...

US-based e-skin Displays demonstrated early prototypes of its plasmonic reflective displays at SID Display 2018. The displays combine a reflective plasmonic surface with liquid crystals. The wavelength of the absorption depends on the liquid crystal orientation near the interface.

The company, who's collaborating with Merck in this project, says that its reflective displays will offer the best color gamut in the industry and the best contrast. The flexible displays can be produced using existing LCD production infrastructure and the company hopes to show a full color display prototype in early 2019, and large 6-inch by 9 inch full-color display samples by the end of 2019.

Sweden-based rdot demonstrated its flexible printed electrochromic display prototypes at SID Displayweek 2018. These are simple displays that are produced using screen printing technology. rdot says that its displays will be ultra-low cost when commercialized.

rdot's displays are monochrome segmented (passive-matrix ones are under development) e-paper displays that are non-volatile (but only up to around 15 minutes, these are not long-term). The displays can be be produced in any color.

Japan Display (JDI) demonstrated its latest high-resolution (198 PPI) 30cm-wide e-paper displays for the electronic shelf-label market.

JDI is also developing much higher density e-paper displays (400 PPI and 600 PPI), these were detailed at E Ink's booth at SID but JDI did not demonstrate any of these next-gen e-papers at its own booth.

Color e-paper developer CLEARink demonstrated its latest wearable color e-paper displays at SID 2018. The most interesting display was a 1.32" 202 PPI color e-paper display that offer a color gamut of 30% NTSC (1931 CIE) which is not up to par with regular emissive displays but looks quite good for a reflective display.

CLEARink's displays are electrophoretic displays that achieve color using color filters on top of the display. The panels offer a fast refresh rate which supports video.

E Ink Holdings posted an operating loss of $8.8 million USD in Q1 2018, as it faces a slowdown in e-reader sales and as it increased its operating expenses by 14.3% (this includes the $30 million investment in SES-imageotag). E Ink says that this loss was in line with its expecations, as it knows e-reader vendors are now updating their models and shifting to larger screen sizes (larger than the current 6-inch models).

E Ink says it expects its results to improve in the current quarter, and it believes its 2018 results will be better than its 2017 results.

Here's a short video showing E Ink's booth at SID Displayweek 2018, where the company demonstrated its latest E Ink displays, devices and prototypes. Some of these displays looked very good, especially the new color panels!

E Ink had some very interesting displays in there - including the new medical patch developed with LTS, the high resolution (400 PPI and 600 PPI) E Ink developed together with JDI, a range of new writing pads (from Sony, ReMarkable and Onyx Boox), the GVIDO music stand display, plastic logic's OTFT-powered panels and E Ink's upcoming beautiful color e-paper displays.

Color e-paper developer CLEARink announced that is has signed a supply agreement with a leading tablet maker to start supplying tablet displays beginning in 2019. The agreement calls for at least $10 million in initial orders.

The CLEARink-enabled tablets will feature sunlight visibility, high resolution video and color, and will offer a much higher battery life compared to LCD or OLED based tablets. This is CLEARink's first major supply agreement.