Financial - Page 12

DisplaySearch forecasts that total e-paper display market will grow to 1.8 billion units and $9.6 billion in revenues in 2018, from 22 million units and $431 million in revenues in 2009, for a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 41% for revenues and 64% for units.

E-book displays currently account for the majority of e-paper revenues. Nearly all e-book devices currently in the market use E Ink's electrophoretic display technology, with a small number--such as Fujitsu's FLEPia--using cholesteric LCD (liquid crystal display) technology. Other electrophoretic display suppliers SiPix and Bridgestone have announced that they will also commercialize e-book displays.

Polymer Vision has had financial problems for a while, and back in April they delayed their flexible E Ink display based Readius reader. Now we hear that the company is bankrupt. This is sad - it would have been great to finally have a flexible display reader!

The Readius had a 16-grayscale 320x240 5" e ink based display. When closed the size is 115x57x21mm, and when you open the display, it's 160x115x21mm. 

Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle 2 reader by 60$. The new price is 299$.

Kindle 2

The new Kindle DX is still priced at 489$, and Amazon are still out of stock (says they will ship within 3 to 5 weeks).

Amazon's Kindle DX is sold out again. Amazon says that this is due to heavy customer demand. It will continue shipping in 4-6 weeks (just a couple of weeks ago, the Kindle DX was sold out, but than it took Amazon only a couple of days to get more inventory).

Amazon kindle DX

It might be that E Ink have problem supplying the large 9.7" E Ink display, or, perhaps, there is indeed heavy customer demand. The Kindle DX costs 489$.

Boston.com reports that some E Ink investors are not happy with PVI's acquisition. It turns out that they think that E Ink is worth much more than 215M$... E Ink sales are growing fast - they are projected to reach 110M$ in sales in 2009.

Amazon's Kindle DX (with the 9.7" E Ink display) has sold out in 3 days. We do not know how many they actually sold, but in any case Amazon will have more devices ready by June 17...(you can see this info over at Amazon's Kindle DX page)

The Kindle DX costs 489$, it's not a cheap device, and it's great to see that it is selling so well.

Prime View International (PVI) announced that it will acquire E Ink for 215M$. PVI is actually the world's highest volume supplier of ePaper display modules.

This is interesting news. On one hand it might prove useful as we'll have one company that has the E Ink IP and technology, and also manufacturers the displays. On the other hand it might push other display makers into competitive technologies.

Financially speaking, it's probably a disappointed for investors who have given 150M$ to E Ink over the years. Not a very good return on investment...

As part of the release, we learned the E Ink had 18M$ in sales in 1Q 2009, an impressive number.

iSupply has made a teardown analysis of the Kindle 2, which sells for 360$. iSupply says it only costs 185.5$ to make.

Kindle 2

The most expansive part is the E Ink display - estimated at 60$ (41.5% of the total material bill). It's a 6" diagonal screen, 600 x 800 pixels at 167 ppi, 16-level gray scale.

The second most expensive part is the wireless module from Novatel (39.5$).

Polymer Vision's Readius, which was actually planned for release last year is delayed - because of financial difficulties.

The Readius has a 16-grayscale 320x240 5" e ink based display. When closed the size is 115x57x21mm, and when you open the display, it's 160x115x21mm.