September 2020

Touch screen technology developer SigmaSense announced the closing of a $22 million Series A funding round, led by Foxconn. One of the investors in this round is E Ink Holdings.

SigmaSense develops semiconductor and software solutions for a new generation of high-fidelity sensing data enabling new human-machine interactions - from in-person touchless order kiosks for the hospitality industry to home entertainment, including reimagined interactive at-home learning and work spaces.

US-based Digital View launched a new interface board that is suitable for E Ink's 32" and 42" monochrome ePaper displays.

The new ET-1000 interface board features a USB interface for image content update and can work with most types of media player such as a Raspberry Pi, Android Player or PC. It supports Image flip, mirror and rotate. The ET-1000 comes as a kit with a connector board and cables to connect to the display panel.

TCL announced a new display technology, called NXTPAPER, which uses liquid-crystal technology on a reflective substrate, as can be seen in the image below. TCL did not disclose much about the technology, but it says it offers higher contrast compared to E Ink displays. Compared to LCDs, it offers a thinner design and also much higher power efficiency (as there's no backlighting unit).

The NXTPAPER displays offer blue-light free operation and no flicker. This is not your typical ePaper display technology, but it will be interesting to watch. TCL announced two new tablets that will sport the new display technology, at 8-inch and 10-inch sizes. It is not clear but it is likely that the tablets will include some sort of front-lighting to be visible in low light conditions.

E Ink Holdings says that color e-paper will become more and more important for the company, and it is increasing its capacity as demand is growing - by the end of 2020 it will increase its capacity by 10-fold, and it is likely to increase production capacity further in 2021.

The company also provided a positive outlook for the 2nd half of 2020, as demand for electronic shelf labels (ESL) is increasing - in H1 2020 E Ink shipped as many ESL displays as it did in the whole of 2019. The company's chairman says that 4% of the world's retailers have adopted electronic shelf labels