E-Reader Displays Head Toward Color
blogs.pcmag.com 
Categories:
Displays, Gadgets
Tags:
Displays, E Ink, E-Readers, Electronic Books, Qualcomm
Mirasol Displays Mar 10.jpgE-reader technology is moving ahead, with faster speeds, color, and video on the horizon, according to vendors I spoke to at the DisplaySearch U.S. Flat Panel Display conference this week. In particular, E Ink and Qualcomm MEMS Technology both told me they expect we'll have color e-readers with low-power displays within the next year.
At the conference, Sriram Peruvemba, vice president of marketing for E Ink, estimates that 5 million e-book readers were sold in 2009. But that number will grow to 98 million by 2018. He said he thinks the number can be even higher, with dedicated e-textbooks with flexible color displays, especially in emerging markets.
Currently, Peruvemba said, there are more than 50 ebook products actually shipping in the worldwide market, including more than 10 in China. And that's not counting all the new devices we've seen lately, especially in the emerging e-document and e-newspaper space: products such as the Plastic Logic Que and the Skiff.
Peruvemba said that many more semiconductor vendors are now interested in the ebook market, and this is resulting in faster and less expensive displays. He also noted the advtanges of E Ink displays, saying they have much better battery life, and can be a lot lighter than LCDs: LCD tablets need to be held by two hands, but those using E Ink technology can be held in a single hand, making them better for note taking. The actual E Ink technology allows for flexible screens, "floppy like a piece of paper," but the devices it appears in are stiffened so they are solid, or more like a pad of paper.
Peruvemba told me that different customers want different things, ranging from flexibility to better contrast to more speed to color. His company has shown demonstrations of color displays for the past two years, and he said it looks more like the color you would see in a newspaper than on a LCD screen; but the displays retains the flexibility and battery llfe performance. E Ink is expecting to show more at the SID show in a couple of months, and Peruvemba said it was likely devices based on the color technology would ship around the first quarter of 2011.
Peruvemba said that the company also has screens with much faster refresh rates running in the labs, but he added that it normally takes 2 ½ to 3 years for such products to move from the lab to the fab and show up in shipping products.
He noted that E Ink screens are also beginning to be used in many devices other than e-books, in applications ranging from watches to digital signage. Peruvemba showed me a credit-card-size device with a small screen that he's has been carrying in his pocket that's been running for 2 years on a single battery.
Also at the conference, Brian Gally, director of product management for Qualcomm MEMS technology, talked about the company's Mirasol displays. He said paper is the hardest thing to compete against: It's very low cost, always on, foldable, and very durable. But, he said, the demand is different these days, thanks to Internet content and wireless reach. The handset has evolved, and the e-reader will evolve as well, adding features such as color and video. Convergence in all these devices means more features, which means more demand, and therefore there is a "growing power gap" with battery technology falling behind.
According to Gally, today's e-readers are great for serious book readers, but lack color, video, web viewing, or photos. But although products such as the iPad will be great multimedia devices, they'll be heavier, not as portable, and won't have the battery life.
In between, Gally said, is room for a device with color and video that's still light. That's where he placed Mirasol's display, which uses MEMS technology that reflects light in a cavity, with the interference creating color. The advantages of Mirasol displays include better battery life than electrophoretic (E Ink) displays and much better than LCDs, both on today's applications and even more so on future applications, such as video.
I also talked with Cheryl Goodman, head of marketing for Qualcomm MEMS Technology, and she told me the company was going to focus on the color e-reader market. Early versions of the displays have been used in a few other devices, such as Bluetooth headsets and some handsets, but the company is no longer going to be pushing the bi-chrome (black on white) displays.
Goodman said her company has recently dedicated its own Gen 4.5 fab and expects to be shipping its 5.7-inch color display in time to be in products on the store shelves for this holiday season. Such devices could have an integrated touch interface, for zooming in on contents. In particular, she said, the company is talking to lots of magazine publishers. One advantage of the 5.7-inch display is that devices built on it should be able to fit in a man's suit pocket.
Ross Rubin , Director of Industry Analysis for the NPD Group, started the conference session by noting that mobile reading has changed since 2002, the year the first smartphone--the Treo 180--shipped and the first 3G network was rolled out. An NPD study of e-book users said that in addition to reading books, these users wanted to read newspapers and magazines. And a number also want to be able to watch videos on their devices. In addition to using their e-readers, these customers said they were also using their PCS and smartphones to read on multiple devices.
Rubin said handsets are getting larger screens, but that people who own both netbooks as well as smartphones tend to access e-mail and the Web more from the netbook.
Of course, there are lots of other technologies in development for this market, including those from Pixel Qi, LiquaVista, Pixtronix, Sipex and others. I wrote about a number of these last fall. What's new now is that it looks like we really will see low-power color displays in e-books and other devices in the next year or so.
Today, we think of e-readers, and the current black-and-white E Ink technology comes to mind. A year from now, there may be many other choices. |
