Technology Reality Bites: Electronic-Paper (E-paper)
With technological advancements climbing heights, there is a proportional and potential shift in what people would like to read and where. True it used to be books and that too within the boundaries of their study room where they can concentrate. But changing tastes have made a drastic change in their perspective. Priority being able to concentrate, the books are replaced with blogs and study with a beachside ambience.
It seems that the future of newspapers and books resides in “Electronic paper” (e-paper). With this advancement, there seems to be adverse effects on e-books. The executives engaged in the technology industry claim that they are making efforts to overcome it soon.
Unlike Internet companies that are busy scanning libraries of books to present its online edition, E Ink Corp., which emerged out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is witnessing a surge in orders for its portable, foldable displays that mimic conventional paper.
“Nine different companies launched products last year based on the technology,” said Russell Wilcox, E Ink president. “In the last nine months we’ve gone from manufacturing tens of thousands of parts to millions of parts.”
Among those products are Sony’s Reader tablet, whose black-and-white displays can be read in bright sunlight or a dimly lit room from almost any angle — just like paper — without traditional back-lit screens.
While the displays are becoming more flexible and conserve power, they face other limitations such as working only in monochrome and failing to display video–areas critical to attracting advertisers and consumers to the technology.
E Ink holds more than 100 patents on its “electrophoretic” ink technology.
TECHNOLOGICAL HOP
Motofone, Motorola Corp.’s low-cost mobile phone for the developing world uses the technology because of its ability to conserve power, along with Seiko Epson Corp.’s wristwatch, a flash-memory stick and several other devices.
James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said E Ink needs the technological leap into color and ability to show video before it can reach the masses.
If it can achieve that, McQuivey said, E Ink could threaten to displace the cheap and ubiquitous liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), while revolutionizing how we think about reading.
Another challenge for products like e-books is that the number of books available to download in the United States and Europe remains relatively small.
But Sony reckons that will change as consumers discover the ease of using one device that stores hundreds of titles, and as the Internet makes downloading easy.
“More and more things are going online from Amazon and others,” said David Seperson, a product manager of Sony’s Reader. “We’re seeing real growth in digital text.”