E-Ink Unveils Color Displays; Plastic Logic Gets New Investor

E-Ink Holdings on Tuesday took the wraps off color electrophoretic displays that will start appearing in e-readers in 2011. Meanwhile, licensee Plastic Logic was thrown a financial lifeline by a Russian nanotechnology company.

As it moves to take on color LCDs that have dominated the new tablet PCs, which double as e-readers, including a new Nook from Barnes & Noble, E-Ink unveiled Triton technology designed to increase response times 20 percent, to 240 to 980 milliseconds, in addition to adding 4,096 colors, the company said. The color display are being demonstrated this week at the Flat Panel Display conference in Yokohama, Japan.

The 4-bit color display features 40 percent reflectivity, 10:1 contrast ratio, 200 dots per inch resolution and 180-degree viewing angle and is 1.2mm thick, the company said. The reflectivity and contrast ratio remain unchanged from the mono version. Even with the improved response time, E-Ink displays won’t be able to handle full-motion video, industry officials said. E-Ink has demonstrated displays with 50-millisecond response times (CED May 23/08 p2).

Longtime E-Ink licensee Hanwong Technology’s Hanvon will ship the first color e-reader, using a 9.68-inch display, under the HandyBook brand ($440) in March in China. Hanvon has forecast shipping 1 million of its HandyBook e-readers this year, up from 266,000 in 2009 (CED June 4 p3). Hanvon fielded a mono HandyBook ($295) in 2009 with a 5.5-inch display that was sold in Europe, where the company had a content agreement with Harper Collins. Foxconn, Inventec and Pegatron assemble about half of Hanvon’s e-readers. E-Ink’s roster of component suppliers include Seiko Epson and Texas Instruments for display controllers as well as Marvell and Freescale Semiconductor for processors.

Meanwhile, Plastic Logic, which shelved plans this year for its Que proReader, received a “significant investment” from the Russian Corporation for Nanotechnologies (Rusnano) conditioned on its moving some production of electrophoretic displays to Russia, industry officials said. Plastic Logic, which operates a factory in Dresden, Germany, will add a facility in Russia, but the timing for it to open hasn’t been set, industry officials said. Rusnano hasn’t completed site selection in Russia, a Plastic Logic spokeswoman said. Rusnano is said to have the Russian government’s backing in producing the displays (CED Aug 12 p2).

Russia will spend up to $10.6 billion on nanotechnology by 2015, President Dmitry Medvedev said last year. The Chinese government also is said to have approached Plastic Logic about providing capital, but the sides didn’t reach agreement. And Samsung was said to be among those interested in buying a stake in Plastic Logic. Plastic Logic has raised $100 million since 2006 to fund construction of the Dresden factory and production from investors that include Oak Capital and other venture capital firms, BASF and Intel. OLED materials developer Cambridge Display Technology, which was sold to Sumitomo, also was an investor. The terms of Plastic Logic’s deal with Rusnano weren’t released and a company spokeswoman declined to comment further. Plastic Logic has an R&D facility in Cambridge, U.K. and a U.S. headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Plastic Logic started sample production of the 10.7-inch flexible electrophoretic displays using 780x550mm substrates in 2008 (CED May 22/08 p4) at the Dresden plant. The German government covered about one-third of building costs of the plant, which was to have annual capacity for 1 million units. The Russian facility will eventually have monthly capacity for “hundreds of thousands” of units, Plastic Logic Chief Financial Officer Rik Thorbecke said.

After considering “multiple countries” for expansion, Plastic Logic chose Russia because it offered “the best strategic partnership opportunity,” Thorbecke said. Russia gives Plastic Logic access to “an enormous talent pool of scientists and engineers” and is close to Cambridge and Dresden, he said.

The proReader, which featured a 10.7-inch screen with 1,280x960 resolution, was to be sold through Plastic Logic’s Que.com website and Barnes & Noble’s online and retail stores, in 4 GB ($649) and 8 GB ($799) flash memory configurations. The high-end version was to be compatible with AT&T’s 3G network and feature built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The proReader was unveiled at CES in January. Plastic Logic is developing a second-generation electrophoretic display, but the timing of its release hasn’t been set, a company spokeswoman said.

"The production facility for the next generation of plastic displays will become the first step to establish the new branch of a electronics industry in Russia,” Rusnano Managing Director Georgy Kolpachev said in a written statement. The Russian facility “will be the world’s most advanced fabrication plant in the plastic electronics industry,” he said.

Armed with new funding, Plastic Logic will “dramatically expand” operations to support of volume production of next-generation products, CEO Richard Archuleta said. It will “continue to advance” its “technology platform to deliver on our broader long-term vision,” he said.