Amazon kindle

According to reports, Huawei filed a lawsuit against Amazon and its hardware partner Compal Electronics, saying that Amazon's Kindle being produced in China infringe upon Huawei's E Ink patents.

It is revealed that Huawei sold over 110,000 units of its MatePad Paper device in just 2 months, surpassing Amazon's Kindle sales in the same period. Amazon announced plans to withdraw from the local market in China earlier this year.

Amazon decided to pull out of the Chinese e-reader market. The company will stop offering Kindle devices in China by the end of June 2023, and will also stop operating its eBook stores in China.

Customers in China will be able to download the Kindle app until June 2024, and of the devices themselves will continue to operate with the books stored on them.

Mark Gurman posted an article on Bloomberg, in which he claims that Amazon is developing a Kindle device with a foldable screen. Or, at least, that such a device is under an "internal discussion".

Last month E Ink demonstrated its latest foldable and rollable ePaper displays, which you can see in the video above. It's not clear how close are these display to commercialization. It isn't a big surprise that Amazon is testing these displays and considering a foldable Kindle.

According to report, Amazon decided to shut down Liquavista - an e-paper developer that it has acquired in 2013. It is not clear yet whether Amazon decided to discard the technology, or whether it has moved the technology to another part of the organization.

Liquavista was established in 2006 as a spin-off from Philips, with an aim to develop its Electrowetting technology, which can be used to develop full-color and video-capable e-paper displays. Liquavista was acquired by Samsung in 2011, and in 2013 Samsung sold it to Amazon.

Amazon launched its first Kindle device 10 years ago, and the retail giant is celebrating this event by offering a $30 discount on its 2017 Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Voyage devices.

You can enjoy this discount till the end of the day (October 25) - the Kindle is now at only $49.99, the Kindle Paperwhite at $89.99 and the Kindle Voyage at $169.99. These are the prices for the special offers editions (ad supported).

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.

Back in 2013, Samsung sold LiquaVista, its electrowetting display unit, to Amazon (Samsung itself bought Liquavista in 2011). Electrowetting enables low-power non-volatile color e-paper displays, but the technology has not been commercialized yet.

According to Good-E-Reader, Amazon is now developing an 8" color e-reader that uses an electrowetting display, and it plans to release this new e-reader towards the end of 2016. Amazon will produce these new displays in China - at the Beijing Century Joyo Information Technology's fab in Shenzhen. This is of course not confirmed yet or anything, it'll be interesting to see if Amazon is indeed so far advanced with its Electrowetting tech.

E Ink introduced a new monochrome panel technology called Carta. The Carta offers 50% better contrast and a 20% improvement in reflectance a(more whiteness). Amazon's recently announced new Paperwhite e-reader uses Carta displays.

One three days ago we reported that CopyTele's lawsuit against E Ink was dismissed (although they do have to participate in the CopyTele vs AUO arbitration meetings) - and today a new lawsuit was charged against E Ink, Amazon, B&N and Sony, this time by Research Frontiers.

Research Frontiers developed a technology called SPD, a smart light-control technology. They say that E Ink and the other companies infringed upon two of their patents. Research Frontiers say they have invested about $90 million dollar in decades of research to develop the SPD technology. Over 40 companies around the world entered into a license agreement with them.

Two months ago it was rumored that Samsung wants to sell its electrowetting display unit LiquaVista which they bought back in January 2011, and Amazon may turn out to be the buyer. Now Amazon confirmed the rumors and indeed bought LiquaVista from Samsung.

It makes sense that Amazon is seeking a color display technology for its Kindle e-readers. It may be that E Ink's colored displays are still disappointing Amazon and they need a display with a wider color gamut and better contrast.