E-Ink-Based Color E-Readers to Ship One Million Units This Year

Despite great fanfare, color e-readers armed with E-Ink Holdings’ electrophoretic displays will be a small part of the 30 million units expected to be sold this year, E-Ink Chief Marketing Officer Sriram Perumvemba told us.

With E-Ink having started production of color displays in November, sales of color e-readers are expected to hit one million units this year, with the remainder being mono, Perumvemba said. E-Ink customers Amazon and Sony are expected to wait out the arrival of second-generation color panels in 2012 that promise better color saturation and faster response times, Perumvemba said. There will be some “slight” changes in the electronic inks, and color saturation in second-generation panels will be “substantially better,” Perumvemba said. Response times will be cut to 180 from 200 milliseconds, he said.

Sony and Amazon “doubted anybody would sign up” for first-generation color electrophoretic displays, but the second-generation panels will be a “no brainer for these guys,” Perumvemba said. Samsung and Amazon officials weren’t available for comment.

Among those fielding e-readers with first-generation color panels is Hanvon, which showed an e-reader with a 9.7-inch display at CES with 1,600x1,200 resolution and a 220-microsecond response time. Hanvon, which is using a Texas Instrument OMAP processor in the e-reader, expects to ship the first products in the spring in China priced around $450. Another Chinese manufacturer, Tianjin Jinke Electronics, also demonstrated a 9.7-inch model at CES. Tianjin Jinke sells e-readers under the Hanlin brand. Overall, 4-5 color models are expected to ship this year, Perumvemba said.

"We have second generation panels coming along very quickly, but we're going to give all of 2011 to the first generation panels,” Perumvemba said. E-Ink has produced about 1,000 samples of the second generation panels for potential customers, he said.

E-Ink recently expanded production of electronic ink at its plants in Cambridge and South Hadley, Mass., the latter employing about 200. LG Display, Toppan and Dai Nippon are supplying color filters, while LG and E-Ink affiliate TOC handle module assembly, the latter at a plant in Yangzhou Province in China. Chungwha Picture Tubes recently joined LG Display Chimei Innolux in providing backplanes for e-ink displays.

Among the microprocessors used to power e-readers, Freescale has 60-70 percent share with Marvel, Samsung and Texas Instruments also supplying chips, Perumvemba said. While Epson has been the main supplier of display controllers e-reader displays, Freescale and others are folding the technology into their microprocessors, he said. Chilin also is developing electrophoretic displays for digital signage.

Meanwhile, Delta Electronics demonstrated 8.2- and 13.1-inch displays using Bridgestone’s QR-LPD technology with a goal of starting volume production by Q3 in China, said Jacky Tsai, program manager for e-paper device products. QR-LPD is an electronic powder that’s said to provide quick rendering of black and white images that are clear like E-Ink’s technology and have about the same battery life. Color is provided by a series of filters that go over each individual pixel. Bridgestone makes the displays using a roll-to-roll process.

Delta plans to sell e-readers using under the Vivitek brand in the Far East and Europe, but has no immediate plans for the U.S., a Vivitek spokeswoman said. Delta showed color and mono panels, with the 8.2-inch display featuring 960x768 and 480x384 resolutions. The 13.1-inch model had 1,600x1,200 resolution for mono, 800x600 for color. Both e-readers had 4 GB of internal NAND flash storage, 3G/2G, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity and a touch panel with stylus pen. Delta also demonstrated a 21-inch version for digital signage with resolutions of 2,560x1,920 and 1,280x960 for mono and color. It also had a 4.1-inch display for electronic shelf labels.