E Ink Holding (previous PVI) has posted their June revenues - $53.04 million (USD). Down 3% sequentially but up 4% on year. E Ink expects its revenues for the second quarter of 2010 to remain flat or increase slightly compared to the first quarter.
Revenues for the third quarter are expected to rise significantly, because there are several new e-readers planned for that time.
Prime View International (PVI) was the international name Yuan Tai Technologies of Taiwan. Now they have decided to change the international name to E Ink Holdings Incorporated. The company reaffirms their strong commitment to ePaper.
E Ink Holdings Incorporated will offer its ePaper products under the brand name âE Inkâ and its LCD products under the brand name âHydisâ.
PVI's Chairman Scott Liu says that products that use color E Ink displays are expected by the end of 2010. This is earlier than previous PVI estimates. The color panels are currently sampling to customers, but no definitive partnerships have been made public.Â
PVI says that they have no plans to make their own e-reader. This makes sense as PVI are supplying E Ink displays to a lot of companies, and they do not want to upset their own customers by competing with them.
Digitimes reports that PVI is planning to invest $500 million to expand its E Ink production business in China. PVI will also collaborate with Fnashu.com and Phoenix publishing for content development.
PVI's plan is to turn Yangzhou into a E Ink production hub, and the investment will cover all sectors: from material supply to device development. PVI hopes that other companies will follow suit and invest in e-paper production in the area.
Update: we've got a video of the new prototype displays, see below
PVI is now showing 6" and 9.7" color E Ink displays for e-readers at a trade show in Shenzhen, China. The displays are demoing animated color clips, although the refresh rate is not fast enough for video. PVI has shown those screens to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, although they won't say whether there are any plans to use them in future e-readers.
PVI predicts mass-production to start 4Q 2010. The new PVI screens add an extra layer of color-filtering glass on top of a standard E Ink panel. The color screens consume more energy than monochrome ones. PVI also displayed new flexible displays, made from plastic which could make readers lighter and harder to break.
E Ink's CEO, Russell Wilcox has resigned from the company. PVI's CEO will take over as E Ink manager. Resull co-founded E Ink back in 1997 - and stayed with the company for over 13 years.
Rusell reveals that E Ink is expanding - and plans to hire 100 manufacturing workers in the South Hadley, and 50 scientists and engineers in Cambridge, US.
Bookeen are a France-based e-reader maker, that currently offer two models that use E Ink displays (the Cybook Gen3, available now for 350$, and the Opus, available now for 215$). They are set to release a new one, the Orizon, which uses Sipix e-paper instead. We have posted an interview with their CEO over at E-Reader-Info, discussing this, and other e-reader issues. If you don't want to read the whole interview, here's the 3 reasons why they moved to Sipix:
PVI's chairman says that they plan to release color and flexible E Ink displays. They are also working on touch-enabled E Inks, and ones that support video. They predict that the market share of touch-capable e-readers will increase sharply in 2010. PVI wants to place the touch sensors behind the display, so image quality will be better.
PVI also reveals that E Ink's response time has increased, to the point where animation can be played.
PVI will triple its E Ink film and back-end modules capacity by the end of 2010 (in a $1.5 million investment). Their chairman says that global e-reader sales may exceed 10 million in 2010. Over 50 new vendors are expected to launch e-readers this year.