E Ink Holdings announced that China-based Yiwu Qing Yue Optoelectronics has become a member of its ePaper ecosystem partnership. EIH says that Yiwu Qing Yue will be one of the main suppliers of Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL) modules to the retail market.
Yiwu Qing Tue will assemble ESL modules based on E Ink displays. EIH hopes the company will be able to increase its penetration into the Chinese markets.
EPD solution provider Netronix announced that it has received major orders for E Ink name badges from a medical testing equipment company in the US, with shipments to start in Q3 2020.
Netronix also reports that interest in its e-Notebook products have increased, while demand for electronic baggage tags is much lower due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also active with electronic shelf labels, large-area ePaper signage and e-readers (the company will ramp up its 6-inch color E Ink e-readers and name tags in Q3 2020).
Ynvisible announced a collaboration with Evonik Creavis to combine Evonik's TAeTTOOz printable polymer battery materials with Ynvisible's electrochromic displays. The two companies have also jointly developed a technology demonstrator.
The two companies say that combining the printable battery and display could be used to create novel IoT products. The demonstrator is an ultra low-weight, minimal-energy flexible and transparent system. Both the battery and the display are manufactured in a single step which lowers the production cost and eliminates design and production restrictions of conventional electronics.
E Ink Holdings reported its Q1 2020 results. The company's net profit ($26.23 million) was its highest in nine years. The company expects its growth to continue in Q2 2020 with strong demand for electronic shelf labels and color e-paper displays, mainly for e-readers.
EIH says that the virus pandemic is increasing demand for ESL which allow retailers to update product price displays automatically from a central controller in addition as more students and workers stay home, it increases demand for e-notebooks and e-readers.
Wireless charging developer Energous announced a partnership with E Ink Holdings to develop WattUp-enabled Electronic Paper Display (EPD) tags for IoT displays such as logistics tags, electronic shelf labels and retail signage.
The goal of this new collaboration is to embed Energous' technology inside the EPD display, which will create displays that can be charged wirelessly at distances up to 15 feet away.
Ynvisible announced that it has acquired the electrochromic display developer rdot, for $123,000 plus time-limited performance remuneration. rdot's two employees will join Ynvisible's team. Ynvisible says that it will adopt rdot's display prototyping business and transfer the technology to its high volume industrial production facility.
Ynvisible also announced that it will be closing a non-brokered private placement to raise gross proceeds of $1.5 million CAD (around $1.08 million USD).
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.
