Market reports

DisplaySearch say that shipments of e-paper increased to 5 million units in 2009, up 417% on year from 950,000 units in 2008, mainly due to the popularity of e-book readers. The Amazon Kindle has 66% of the total e-paper market, which means that they sold 3.3 million units.

Via Digitimes

IntertechPira 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.

PVI says that their e-paper production lines are fully booked, till the end of the December. The company has readied new production lines for the displays.

Via Cens.com

DisplaySearch forecasts that total e-paper display market will grow to 1.8 billion units and $9.6 billion in revenues in 2018, from 22 million units and $431 million in revenues in 2009, for a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 41% for revenues and 64% for units.

E-book displays currently account for the majority of e-paper revenues. Nearly all e-book devices currently in the market use E Ink's electrophoretic display technology, with a small number--such as Fujitsu's FLEPia--using cholesteric LCD (liquid crystal display) technology. Other electrophoretic display suppliers SiPix and Bridgestone have announced that they will also commercialize e-book displays.

Electrophoretic was the leading technology in 2008, and DisplaySearch forecasts that the technology will continue to lead the e-paper display market growth for this forecast period, and reach $5.8 billion by 2018.

View more at DisplaySearch

There's a new report by the Cleantech Group that says that e-readers are green. In fact, according to the projected sales of e-readers in 2009 and 2012 could reduce co-2 emissions by 10.9 million tons.

Their analysis says that one year of use could offset the emissions made by manufacturing and distribution (and operation). Each following year of use could actually be preventing the release of 370 pounds of carbon dioxide per user (assuming individuals buy about 22.5 books a year).

The report mentions that using an e-paper based reader (currently almost all of these are E Ink based) is best - because of the low power consumption.

Via e-reader-info

Displaysearch has released their Quarterly Worldwide FPD Forecast Report. They forecast that OLED TV revenues will increase at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 140% from 2008 to 2016 - from 2M$ in 2008 to 2.4B$ in 2016.

Demand for electronic books will lift revenue of electrophoretic and similar display technologies at a 49% CAGR (from 246M$ in 2008 to 1.7B$ in 2016).

Total FPD sales will rise only 1% per year, according to DisplaySearch.