April 2011

E Ink Holdings reported a net profit of NT$1.67 billion ($57.7 million) on revenues of NT$10.09 billion ($347 million) for the Q1 2011. The earnings-per-share more than doubled over last year (but were lower than the earnings in the previous quarter).

E-Paper displays (EPD) products contributed 60-70% of the total revenues. The company says that the market for EPD is expected to continue growing - in fact the company predicts that in 2011 the market will increase 2-3 fold over 2011.

Bridgestone is showing two new "tablets" called AeroBee that use the company's color touch e-paper panels. The panels are sized 13" (A4) and 21" (A3) - these are the largest e-paper panels around. Bridgestone will market those to businesses - to be used as in-store displays or kiosks.

Back in January we saw an e-reader playing video (by Bookeen) - and today we found out that someone ported Doom 2 to an E Ink e-reader (a prototype PocketBook 360 Plus). Pretty neat:

Apple filed a new patent application describing a new hybrid display that can dynamically switch between a full-color LCD (or OLED) to a low power monochrome e-paper. Actually, the screen can be operate in the two modes together - where some parts of the image is seen via the LCD/OLED and the rest via the e-paper. It seems that Apple recognizes the advantages of an e-paper display for actual reading...

The idea is to make a display that has "multiple composite display regions", each made from a transparent e-paper panel on top of an LCD/OLED. The display has several independently activated backlight units, illuminating the LCD panels when necessary (this won't be necessary in an OLED, obviously, as it does not require backlighting at all). On top of the whole device there's a touch layet, too.