Stop Press! Electronic paper is here
Published: 15 Jul 2005 12:10 BST
Plastic Logic claims it too will begin shipping fully functional 800 pixel × 600 pixel A5 flexible displays to their applications development partners in late 2005.
Although it seems that much of the technology required to build flexible paper thin displays is now in place, that isn't the whole story. The bigger issues are whether consumers are ready for flexible electronic displays, and the impact they will have on paper.
According to most of the companies involved, the first commercial products using e-paper displays should appear in mid-to-late 2006. Initially these will niche market products, such as Philips proposed GPS unit with roll-up map display, the animated point-of-sale displays being developed by NeoLux in Korea, or the signs under development by Vossloh of Germany. It will, most agree, be 2007-8 before we start to see the arrival of e-publication readers with A4 digital paper displays.
According to a report on e-paper displays due to be published at the end of July by the consultancy DigitalPublishingNews.net flexible displays will in 2010 account for about 40 percent of the annual global production of 3.5 million square metres of flat panel displays. The total global market for such flexible displays is expected to be worth about $7.8bn (£4.4bn), split almost equally between organic electronics/electrophoretic displays and a new generation of flexible LCD displays currently under development by companies like HP and Philips.
The largest proportion of this market will initially go to signage products, with e-readers only starting to take off after about 2008. The report also predicts that commercial A4 size e-readers using digital paper will be on sale in 2010 at around $100 and will support a range of PDA-type functions.
Compared to the size of the paper and printer market, the size of the e-paper display market in 2010 is small, and certainly the makers of printers and the suppliers of printing-related products, like Xerox and HP, will not be losing too much sleep at this stage.
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