Product on Shelves Early 2011

E Ink to Deliver First Color E-Reader Displays by Year-end

May 27, 2010 by Mark Seavy|Top News

SEATTLE -- Prime View International’s subsidiary E Ink will deliver its first color electrophoretic displays (EPDs) to OEM customers late this year, Prime View Executive Vice President T.H. Peng told us at the Society for Information Display conference. Based on that timing, Prime View thinks the first EPD-based color e-readers will reach store shelves by early 2011, Peng said. Peng spoke as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was telling shareholders at the company’s annual meeting Tuesday that a color-display Kindle e-reader was “still a ways out” (CED May 26 p3).

Color EPDs are being sampled to customers, with initial production set to begin in late fall and volume manufacturing to follow in the first half of 2011 at Prime View plants in Taiwan. Color EPDs have the potential to expand the technology into digital signage, and Prime View has signed an agreement with Chilin Technology to develop EPDs for those very types of low-power industrial and specialized applications. But it’s likely most color EPDs will gravitate to e-readers, which account for 80 percent of E Ink’s revenue, Peng said.

The specs on color EPDs aren’t available, but E Ink has shown prototypes with 1024x600 resolution, 18:1 contrast ratios and 40 percent reflectivity. Size-wise, color EPDs for e-readers will likely be in the 5-10-inch range, the same as for black-and-white, Peng said. In commercializing color EPDs, E Ink will likely draw from its existing base of processor suppliers, many of which, including Freescale, Marvel, Samsung and Texas Instruments, have integrated timing controllers. Their CPUs have clock speeds of 600-800 MHz.

The hardware and software infrastructure already is in place for commercializing color EPDs, but E Ink is developing new ink materials. “We do believe that by going to color we will create a lot of new markets and business opportunities and that’s why we are spending a lot of resources on color,” Peng said. “What needs to be confirmed is that there is strong demand for color from the consumer side. A lot of end users said they are happy with black and white. I think it will take some time to see how the first product is doing and some customers may prefer a simpler design. We need to see what actual demand for color displays is before we see many other device makers jump into the product."

Color e-readers may see more use in devices that deliver photo-heavy electronic newspapers and magazines rather than books, where many think a mono display is adequate, Peng said. Despite the arrival of color EPDs, LCDs will retain their edge in video reproduction, Peng said. “A lot of customers would like to see video, but we tell them the technology today is not as good as LCD with regard to video-rated color performance,” he said of color EPDs. They also have a slower refresh rate than LCDs -- 370-900 milliseconds per page turn depending on the gray scale and system design, Peng said. By comparison, LCDs have sub-5 millisecond refresh rates, he said. E Ink has demonstrated a 50-millisecond refresh rate in the past.

To prepare for color EPDs and strong e-reader demand, E Ink will boost production of ink materials “significantly” at its facilities in Cambridge and South Hadley, Mass., said Peng. E Ink will increase the combined work force at the two Massachusetts facilities to 260 from 150 during the next 12 months with a focus on bolstering R&D staff, Peng said. It also will hire factory and quality control managers for the South Hadley plant. The EPD coating is produced in South Hadley as well as at a third-party vendor site in Japan that has longstanding ties to an unidentified E Ink customer, Peng said.

While most e-reader EPDs are produced at Prime View’s 3.5-generation substrate plant in Taiwan, E Ink also has an agreement with Chi Mei Innolux for 5G production, Peng said. Prime View has forecast shipping 10 million EPDs this year, not including color EPDs, up from 4 million a year ago, Peng said. EPDs could be scaled up to larger sizes, up to 20-22 inches for PC monitors and 60-80 inches for commercial displays, but demand is expected to be mainly for smaller e-reader panels for “the next several years,” Peng said. The commercial signage market won’t account for “significant volume” for some time, he said.

Meanwhile, Plastic Logic, which will soon deliver its Que e-reader with an 10.7-inch EPD, expects to have a color version by late 2011, Martin Jackson, vice president of technology, told us. Plastic Logic will initially sell the Que through its own Web site and through Barnes & Noble, and likely will keep the same size of EPD for color, Jackson said. Plastic Logic established an EPD plant for its Que in Dresden, Germany, and thinks its e-reader business could quickly turn profitable, Jackson said. “We raised quite a bit of money for our business and even with modest return we could get pretty good numbers,” Jackson said. “I think it depends on the capital employed. The numbers don’t have to be huge to be a success."

SID Conference Notebook

Microvision at SID demonstrated a 720p version of its MEMs-based display and plans to deliver it in a pico-projector in 2011, a company spokesman said. The laser-based projector shown at SID increased brightness to 15 lumens from 10 lumens and presumably cut power consumption as a result of a switch to custom ASIC from a FPGA chip. Microvision’s ShowWX pico-projector currently consumes three watts, but new ASICs will reduce that to about two watts and the goal is 1.5 watts, the company said. The 720p prototype projector also has better frequency performance than the existing model, said David Lashmet, global product manager for gaming and 3D. STMicroelctronics and Toshiba are supply ASICs to Microvision. Microvision launched U.S. sales of ShowWX in March through its Web site. Though the company hasn’t released sales data, about 70 percent of those who have bought the $549 projector have added the $49 optional VGA dock ($49), the spokesman said. Microvision recently signed a distribution agreement with Florida-based systems integrator Commx, and also is seeking deals with up to 15 distributors in Europe where sales of the pico projector are expected to begin later this year. Microvision received an $8.5 million purchase order from an ODM customer (CED May 14 p3) for its PicP MEMs light engine, but hasn’t disclosed when it will begin recognizing revenue from the deal. The light engine will be deployed in a high-end multimedia player, the company has said. Uniden also has launched private label sales in Australia of the ULP1000 pico-projector using Microvision technology.

Eight tablet PCs will be demonstrated at the Computex show in Taiwan next week using Pixel Qi’s transreflective LCD that features e-paper and color modes, Pixel Qi CEO Mary Lou Jepsen said. The 10.1-inch display has 1,024x768 resolution, 180 candelas and about 40 percent reflectivity, company officials have said (CED June 2 p2). Pixel Qi has worked with Chi Mei Innolux on the display, but also draws from various other suppliers, said Jepsen, whose company has an office in Taipei, Taiwan, for better access to notebook PC suppliers like Compal, Foxconn, Mitac, Quanta and others. In the e-paper mode, the Pixel Qi’s display’s backlight is turned off and it operates as a reflective display making use of ambient light and drawing very little power. There are two color modes for indoor and outdoor which use the backlight and are transmissive. Pixel Qi hasn’t disclosed which companies will be showing tablet PCs based on its technology or those of potential partners, Jepsen said. Notion Ink is said to be among the tablet PC suppliers using Pixel Qi technology. Notion Ink’s Adam tablet PC also uses Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor, is 1080p capable and has an HDMI connector, WiFi and 3G. The Pixel Qi display can be produced on 3G, 4G and 5G lines, Jepsen said.

Corning said it will start production late this year of Gorilla cover glass for 32-inch and larger LCD TVs using a 6G production line at its plant in Shizuoka, Japan. The 1-mm-thick glass -- which stretches across a TV’s LCD panel, replacing the bezel -- will likely find its way into models by early 2011, said John Bayne, director of TV cover glass at Corning. The thickness of the 2-2.5-pound glass will gradually be reduced by half, Bayne said. The glass is expected to initially carry a $30-$60 premium on an LCD TV, Corning has said. But the added cost could be negated by dispensing with the need for bezels, Bayne said. Corning also will continue to produce smaller-sized Gorilla glass on a 4G line in Harrodsburg, Ky., a spokesman said. The Harrodsburg plant produces Gorilla glass for uses including laptops and cellphones. Harrodsburg also has produced glass for the iPad, though Corning executives have declined to comment on their company’s relationship with Apple. Meanwhile, Corning will ship its C2000 second-generation green laser this year, shrinking the package size to 4cc from 7cc and increasing the frequency modulation to 150 MHz from 125 MHz. It also boosts power to 80 milliwatts from 60 milliwatts and has a 530-nanometer wavelength. It replaces the C1000 and was used in Microvision’s demonstration at SID of a 720p pico-projector. Opus Microsystems also is evaluating the C2000 for “multiple” pico-projector designs, President Andrew Hung said.