Why did Bookeen use Sipix and not E Ink in their upcoming Orizon reader?

Bookeen are a France-based e-reader maker, that currently offer two models that use E Ink displays (the Cybook Gen3, available now for 350$, and the Opus, available now for 215$). They are set to release a new one, the Orizon, which uses Sipix e-paper instead. We have posted an interview with their CEO over at E-Reader-Info, discussing this, and other e-reader issues. If you don't want to read the whole interview, here's the 3 reasons why they moved to Sipix:

AUO (Sipix) touchscreen is light year away from Sony resistive technology. You keep the optical quality of ePaper and you get an incredibly reactive touchscreen. For us touchscreen on such a large display is a must-have.
AUO has great developments and move incredibly fast.
They did not want to depend only on one screen manufacturer (PVI).

If you do want to read the whole interview, here's the link.

Feb 17, 2010

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Costs

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 02:04.

another reason to use Sipix displays is costs. Eink has been the only supplier of electronic paper for the last 5 years, so they could state their price.
It's a good thing that Sipix joins the game, so hopefully the price of electronic paper displays and therefor the price of e-readers can go down.