Market updates

The ePaper industry and market, led by E Ink, is growing, mostly fueled by demand for electronic shelf labels, next-gen tablets and eReaders, and signage displays. Here are some recent and popular news that you may find of interest:

• Walmart to install 60 million E Ink shelf labels at 500 stores in the US
• E Ink announces the first deployment of its Kaleido 3 Outdoor signage
• Sharp expands its ePoster lineup with color 13.3" and 25.3" displays
• E Ink launches Spectra 6 full-color ePaper display technology
• McLaren tests E Ink ads in its racing cars
• E Ink Gallery 3 ACeP color ePaper displays move into mass production
• Huawei sold 110,000 E Ink tablet devices in 2 months, sues Amazon over E Ink patents
• Harvard researchers find that E Ink displays are healthier than LCD or OLED displays
• Amazon launches a 10.2-inch eNote/eReader device
• E Ink to spend around $110 million to expand its production facilities
• reMarkable sold over a million E Ink tablets, raises funds
• Is Apple testing color E Ink displays for future foldable phones and tablets?
• Is Amazon developing a foldable E Ink Kindle device?

The ePaper industry and market, led by E Ink, is facing high demands and we are seeing a host of new devices and solutions based on ePaper displays. Here are some recent and popular news that you may find of interest:

• Amazon launches a 10.2-inch eNote/eReader device
• E Ink to adopt Sharp's IGZO backplane in future eReader and eNote displays
• E Ink to spend around $110 million to expand its production facilities
• reMarkable sold over a million E Ink tablets, raises funds
• E Ink announces the improved Gallery 3 ACeP color ePaper display
• E Ink announces a new five-color ePaper display for retail applications
• Reflective LCD developer Azumo raised $30 million
• Is Apple testing color E Ink displays for future foldable phones and tablets?
• E Ink launches Gallery Plus ACeP displays with improved colors and contrast
• E Ink shows foldable and rollable ePaper displays
• Is Amazon developing a foldable E Ink Kindle device?
• Plastic Logic's 2.1" flexible color (ACeP) display panel is now available

Most people when they think about ePaper displays immediate think about E Ink. E Ink Holdings (EIH) has been very successful in bringing its ePaper displays to the market - and today these are prevalent in e-readers, electronic shelf labels, e-notebooks and many other applications. While EIH indeed has a clear leadership in the ePaper market, it is not alone.

But first of all, it is important to note that there are many display technologies that could be called ePaper displays. Most people would only consider truly bi-stable displays able to show dot-matrix images as ePaper displays, but some other technologies that are not truly bi-stable also exist and some consider these as ePaper displays as well - for example Memory LCDs. In addition some simpler displays technologies that are similar to ePaper in properties also exist. We will discuss both these technologies in this article.

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Market research firm Technavio says that the global e-paper market is expected to grow at a very fast rate of 39% CAGR.

The top three segments of the e-paper market, according to Technavio, are e-readers, mobile displays and public displays. E-readers are still the main e-paper display application, and E Ink itself also says that the market is finally set to start growing after years of decline and stagnation.

Amazon reportedly enjoyed tremendous success with its second annual Prime Day. According to the Good E-Reader, one of the biggest success stories was the Kindle e-Reader - Amazon sold a few hundred thousand of its Kindles worldwide.

Amazon offers several e-reader Kindles - from the basic models up to the high-end $290 Kindle Oasis. It's likely that most people opted for the cheaper, basic Kindle.

E Ink Holdings reported their results for Q4 2014, with NT$793 million ($25 million USD) in net profit. The company suffered from an operating loss of $951 million ($30 million USD), but had a net profit due to royalties from the high-res FFS LCD manufacturing technology (used for the first time in an Apple iPhone). Royalties amounted to $NT3.56 billion ($110 million USD) in 2014.

For the whole of 2014, E Ink's net profit dropped to $NT13 million ($420,000 USD) - down from $NT29 million ($930,000 USD) in 2013.

E Ink reported their quarterly results - sales dropped 46% compared to last year, and the company's net loss was $33.6 million. E Ink expects e-reader sales in 2013 to be between 10 to 15 million (the same as in 2012).

In 2011, around 30 million e-readers were sold. Back then analysts expected the market to grow (IDTechEx's "conservative" estimate was that it will grow to 60 million units in 2015) as nobody expected the tablet market to take over reading from e-readers. I still think one of the biggest problems in the e-reader market is that e-readers didn't really change in past years. Even the old Kindles offer a great reading experience and there isn't any compelling reason to upgrade. That's actually very good for everyone (Us consumers, Amazon who makes money from books and not e-readers, and mother earth) - except E Ink themselves, of course.

E Ink said it expects its second half revenues to grow significantly from the first half - not just because of season factors - they expect new e-reader products in north america to re-ignite the e-reader market. E Ink also revealed that Rakuten (a Japanese e-commerce and internet company that owns Kobo) sold 100,000 e-readers in Japan since the launch last month.

E Ink plans to focus on non e-reader applications in the future to improve profitability. They expect demand for e-tags for convenience stores and supermarkets to "explode" next year.

E Ink Holdings posted their financial results for 2011 - with $220 million in net profit, up 59% compared to 2010. Gross margin in 4Q dropped compared to last quarter as the company saw a rise in FFS panel shipments (mostly to the Kindle fire probably) - which carry a lower margin compared to EPD products.

Flexible E Ink (LG Display)

EIH's Chairman, Scott Lu said that the company isn't ramping up its Triton color E Ink product (this is probably in response to the color Kindle rumor). The company is working on a next-gen color E Ink display and it is expected by 4Q 2012. E Ink also reveals that it will release flexible plastic-based E-Ink displays in 3Q or 4Q of 2012.