E Ink IncColor E Ink readers to appear in 2011, faster E Ink to arrive in 2012-1303/04/2010Sri Peruvemba from E Ink has talked to PC Magazine, and he gives some very interesting information. He expects color E Ink to arrive soon, and devices based on this technology would ship in the beginning of 2011. This color will be more like the color you would see in a newspaper, and not like an LCD display. We can expect more on this from E Ink at the SID show in May. Sri also reveals that they are working on much-faster E Ink displays, but it can take around 2-3 years for such technology to show up in shipping products... E Ink's CEO steps down03/03/2010E 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. Via Boston.com Freescale announces new fast & cheap e-reader processor03/01/2010Freescale announced today a new processor called i.MX508 targeted for e-readers. The processor is based on an ARM A8 core and includes an E Ink controller. Freescale says that the chip is fast (800Mhz), efficient and cheap (less than $10 in large volumes). In fact they say that this chip can enable $150 e-readers. The new chip is faster than Freescale's previous e-reader chips (used in the Amazon Kindle and Sony's Readers, for example) which can result in faster page refresh and can enable new features. As the chip includes an E Ink controller, USB and NAND memory it can help reduce the price of the final product. Interestingly, the chip includes a special e-reader power mode, in which it can turn-off when users are reading a page to save power, and only operate at full-speed when users want to turn a page or perform an operation. The i.MX508 is expected to sample in 3Q 2010, and freescale (together with E Ink) are offering a dev-platform (called SABRE) which costs $1995 and is available now. Via E-Reader-Info PVI plans color, flexible, touch and video enabled E Ink displays in 201002/07/2010PVI'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. Via Digitimes PVI to triple E Ink production, sees over 10 million e-readers sold in 201002/05/2010PVI 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. Via E-Reader-Info New e-readers and e-paper webinar coming next month01/29/2010IntertechPira and +plasticElectronics have announced an upcoming webinar (18 of February) called "e-readers and e-paper: technology and applications" that will discuss the evolution of e-paper for the e-reader market. The webinar will be given by Ian French, a principal scientist at Prime View International (PVI). The webinar will provide an overview of e-readers to date, technology advances in three key areas: flexibility, color and video and will also discuss future applications for e-paper displays. TI to offer new processors and software for E Ink e-readers01/08/2010TI has collaborated with E Ink to create new chips for E Ink e-readers. The new chips integrate E Ink's e-paper displays with TI power management ICs and OMAP 3 processors - in the world's first power management integrated circuit for E Ink displays. TI has also developed a new software-based display controller. The companies says that this will result in smaller silicon footprint and cheaper hardware that are more energy efficient than before. |
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