E Ink Holdings says it plans to double its capital expenditure this year (to $56.5 million) in order to expand its capacity and meet its customer demand. EIH is now building four new production lines in Taiwan.

EIH says its capacity is now fully booked for the year, and it is quite sure it will be able to find customers for its new capacity as demand is strong. The company's revenues in the first two months of the year rose by 77% compared to last year. The main growth driver seems to electronic shelf label displays, but EIH also sees higher sales for e-readers and e-notebooks.

E Ink Holdings officially launched its new color ePaper display, the E Ink Kaleido Plus. The new display technology enables 16-levels of grayscale and 4,096 colors. The new display offers sizes up to 7.8-inch in size (larger than E Ink's first generation Kaleido displays).

E Ink explains that with the new Kaleido display, it has implemented an improved printed color filter array (CFA) technology, with an improved, faster and brighter ink player. These two improvements enable brighter colors with better text rendering.

E Ink Holdings announced new Digital Paper solutions, developed in collaboration with pen tablet solution provider Wacom and Linfiny, E Ink's own JV with Sony Semiconductor Solutions.

These new solutions feature Wacom's EMR technology and are based on E Ink's 10.3" and 13.3" E Ink Carta 1250 panels. EIH says that the new platform offers faster pen speed and faster page turns compared to its previous platforms. The new devices will be commercialized in the summer of 2021, and EIH and Linfiny are looking for OEM partners.

Low-power IoT Bluetooth technology developer Atmosic announced that it has developed a reference design for eBadge applications in collaboration with E Ink Holdings.

Atmosic will offer the power-optimized eBadge reference design, featuring one of E Ink’s 2.9” or 3.7” black and white displays, or 4.1” Gallery Palette color displays. The kit utilizes Atmosic’s M series extreme low-power Bluetooth LE platform, enabling long, multiyear battery life which can be extended by using optional on-chip energy harvesting.

E Ink Holdings announced that it has signed a joint-development agreement with Shenzhen-based MICROVIEW Electronics, for the development of ePaper modules for retail shelf labels, healthcare, wearables and various IoT applications.

E Ink will provide the ePaper films to MICROVIEW which will be authorized to manufacture and sell ePaper display modules. MICROVIEW expects to reach an annual production capacity of five to eight million ePaper display modules in 2021 and an annual production capacity of 10 million ePaper modules in 2022.

E Ink Holdings announced a strategic partnership with custom LCD designer and producer Yes Optoelectronics. Under the new partnership, the two companies will research and develop ePaper modules, products and materials - and the agreement also includes sales and marketing support.

E Ink will supply its ePaper films to Yes Optoelectronics to develop and manufacture display modules. E Ink and Yes Optoelectronics will work together to expand ePaper product applications in the IoT space, including electronic shelf labels, smart labels, smart home, smart wearables, smart logistics, smart healthcare, smart transportation, industrial instrumentation and wireless communication.

E Ink Holdings says that it expects revenues in Q4 2020 to be somewhat stronger than its revenues in Q3 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to increase demand for e-readers, e-notebooks and electronic shelf labels.

EIH's Chairman Johnson Lee says that the company expects next year to be strong as well, and the company increased its capacity expansion plans for 2021 as it needs to be ready for stronger demand in the future.

E Ink Holdings says that the COVID-19 pandemic is increasing demand for e-readers and electronic shelf labels, and the company expects its 2020 revenues to reach a four-year high, when the company started to focus entirely on e-paper displays.

Due to the pandemic, consumers are buying more e-readers and tablets. Retailers are looking to adopt ESL solutions to avoid virus transmission routes as well as to enhance delivery efficiency.

Touch screen technology developer SigmaSense announced the closing of a $22 million Series A funding round, led by Foxconn. One of the investors in this round is E Ink Holdings.

SigmaSense develops semiconductor and software solutions for a new generation of high-fidelity sensing data enabling new human-machine interactions - from in-person touchless order kiosks for the hospitality industry to home entertainment, including reimagined interactive at-home learning and work spaces.

E Ink Holdings says that color e-paper will become more and more important for the company, and it is increasing its capacity as demand is growing - by the end of 2020 it will increase its capacity by 10-fold, and it is likely to increase production capacity further in 2021.

The company also provided a positive outlook for the 2nd half of 2020, as demand for electronic shelf labels (ESL) is increasing - in H1 2020 E Ink shipped as many ESL displays as it did in the whole of 2019. The company's chairman says that 4% of the world's retailers have adopted electronic shelf labels