E Ink - Page 31

Taiwan's Chi Lin Technology announced the formation of a new subsidiary called Pervasive Displays Inc (PDI) - which will design and manufacture e-paper modules (for commercial and industrial display applications). PDI will develop low-power small-to-medium-sized display components based on E Ink's e-paper technology.

Initial target markets for the business include logistics, retail price tags, and industrial automation where dynamically controlled paper-like displays replace wasteful and inefficient paper signs.

E Ink's Sri Peruvemba says that there's generally a two-year cycle in E Ink technology as it takes some time to develop and test new generation displays. Sri says that we shouldn't expect a new monochrome E Ink display (to replace the Pearl) in 2011. I guess we'll have to wait till 2012!

What we are likely to see soon are speed improvements - full-motion video (24fps) using updated drivers and faster processors. Bookeen has already been showing about 10-15fps video on Pearl displays.

Canada's Human Media Lab is showing a new flexible E Ink display prototype called Snaplet. This device is a wrist-mounted bracelet that has a touch display and shape sensing: when you open it up it automatically opens a notepad applications, and when you take it and curve it next to your ear it answers a phone call... pretty neat:

It's still pretty bulky of course, but this might be an interesting form factor for a phone. And it somewhat reminds us of the OLED bracelet that Universal Display and LG are developing for the US army:

E Ink Holdings reported a net profit of NT$1.67 billion ($57.7 million) on revenues of NT$10.09 billion ($347 million) for the Q1 2011. The earnings-per-share more than doubled over last year (but were lower than the earnings in the previous quarter).

E-Paper displays (EPD) products contributed 60-70% of the total revenues. The company says that the market for EPD is expected to continue growing - in fact the company predicts that in 2011 the market will increase 2-3 fold over 2011.

Back in January we saw an e-reader playing video (by Bookeen) - and today we found out that someone ported Doom 2 to an E Ink e-reader (a prototype PocketBook 360 Plus). Pretty neat:

E Ink launched a new and interesting product today. It's a monochrome SURF E Ink display that is laminated behind color overlays. E Ink is launching the new product together with Sino Pac Bank and the Miramar department store, which will use these as flashing point-of-purchase displays in the food courts of Maramar department stores (in Taipei, Taiwan).

Those SURF displays can be made in a wide range of sizes: from a few inches to a few meters for billboards.

E Ink says that they produce 10 million e-paper displays (EPDs) in 2010. They plan to increase this to 25 million in 2011. Most of these displays are 6" as this is the most popular e-reader size. 

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?

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.

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: