E Ink Inc News

The FlexTech Alliance completed its 154th technical project and developed a flexible medical triage bandage which monitors vital signs. Physical Optics Corporation and E Ink Corporation collaborated on this project and produced the bandage, which includes a printed circuit board (PCB), low power microcontroller, flexible E Ink panel, energy harvesting, a Bluetooth wireless interface and physiological sensors (ECG, skin temperature, and respiration rate).

The two companies say that the initial feedback was extremely positive and hopefully this will be commercialized into a product in the future.

E Ink announced a new 1.73" flexible "Mobius" display, specifically engineered for smartwatch and watch applications. The display features a 320x240 resolution and 16 grayscale levels, and it can be cut into different shapes.

The first produce to use this new display is the Sonostar Smartwatch, which was announced at Computex, Taiwan. The watch was jointly developed by Sonostar and E Ink's subsidiary Transmart.

E Ink announced their new Spectra e-paper panels which features three pigments - black, white and red. Spectra panels are aimed towards retailer applications which will benefit from the extra color. E Ink will start producing spectra panels in Q3 2013.

E Ink announced their new Aurora panels, which are monochrome matrix e-paper panels aimed towards low-temperature applications. Aurora panels can still operate even at -25 C. It is ideal for electronic shelf label and smart cards applications in the retail, medical and logistics markets.

E Ink will start producing Aurora panels soon and the first panels will ship to customers in July 2013. One such partner, Opticon, plan to release IP rated freezer tags in 2", 2.7", 4.41", and 7.4" form factors.

Back in October 2012 we posted about an Onyx E Ink phone prototype, and now we hear reports that the company plans to launch this phone soon. The so-called E43 Android phone sports a 4.3" E Ink panel and a 1 Ghz CPU.

The company is also working on two new E Ink e-readers. Both will have Wi-Fi, a touch display, 4GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU. They will actually be Android (v2.3) tablets, limited by the E Ink display. The BOOX R65 will have an IR touchscreen while the BOOX C65 will have a capacitive touchscreen.

Update: We added a nice video of Sony' prototype device below

E Ink and Sony have co-developed a new plastic-based flexible E Ink display called Mobius. The Mobius panel uses Sony's flexible TFT technology, and will be produced by E Ink. Mass production of 13.3" 1200x1600 panels will begin in 2013. Those 13.3" panels will weigh only 60 grams - less than 50% of the weight of glass based panels, and will be much more rugged as there's no glass.

Sony unveiled a prototype tablet that uses those displays - aimed for the educational market. The A4 sized tablet (13.3") features a touchdisplay with stylus input, 4GB of memory (with microSD) and Wi-Fi. The whole device is just 6.8 mm thick and weighs just 385 grams. Sony hopes to start trials in three Japanese Universities later in 2013 and will hopefully launch it during the company's 2013 fiscal year (i.e. by March 2014).

E Ink Holdings is raising money - the company will issue 60 million new shares. The current share price is $NT 21, so the company will raise about $40 million USD. E Ink Holdings had large losses in 2012 (around $25 million) due to the drop in e-reader sales.