August 2017

In April 2017, E Ink Holdings and Sony Semiconductor Solutions announced a joint venture with an aim to develop, manufacture and market products that use e-paper displays. E Ink now reveals that the JV, called Linfiny, will officially commence operations towards the end of 2017.

Linfiny will focus, at least initially, on e-paper notebook products. Linfiny was setup with an initial capital of $13.9 million. Sony and EIH together hold 70% with the rest of the investment coming from venture capital funds. Linfiny aims to develop solutions that will shorten the time-to-market for its clients - it will not produce its own devices.

Market research firm Technavio says that the global e-paper market is expected to grow at a very fast rate of 39% CAGR.

The top three segments of the e-paper market, according to Technavio, are e-readers, mobile displays and public displays. E-readers are still the main e-paper display application, and E Ink itself also says that the market is finally set to start growing after years of decline and stagnation.

E Ink Holdings reported its financial results for Q2 2017. E Ink's revenues were $121 million USD while profit totaled $31 million USD. EIH's gross margin increased from 35.1% in Q2 2016 to 39.5% in Q2 2017.

E Ink expects that electronic shelf labels sales will continue to grow in the rest of 2017. A report from China suggests that E Ink has orders from Amazon, the Alibaba Group and China-based jd.com. The same report also says that e-reader sales are expected to finally grow again as these readers are now entering the Chinese and Indian markets.

We are happy to announce a new Metalgrass knowledge hub, MicroLED-Info.com. Our new site will focus on Micro-LED display technology and its future market. Micro-LED displays are a promising future display technology, one that should be on the radar of all display experts.

Many expect the first Micro-LED devices to hit the market in the very near future, with first applications in the wearable market - and also in HUDs and HMDs. MicroLED promise great performance, very high efficiency and brightness - but of course there still many technical challenges ahead.