New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance

Technology Review reports from the Consumer Elecronics Show in Las Vegas that potential e-reader competitors to E-Ink are everywhere. The current market leader in e-book displays is greyscale-only, and it takes a long time to change the display ("turn the page"), so video applications are not possible. E-Ink says they will have a color display shipping by late next year, but it will be dimmer than the current greyscale and its response time will still be too slow for video. The wannabe competitors — Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays — all do color and some of them can do video (Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Liquavista), and some of them (Pixel Qi, Kent) are shipping now.

Comments

Do not want.

[binaryspiral]

The beauty of grayscale eink is that it's very close to paper - making it easy to read for long periods of time. However, the transition time on the Kindle or other grayscale eink devices is long enough to be annoying. Making these transitions longer will decrease my satisfaction in them, making the display dimmer will make them worthless to me.

If I wanted color, I'd hit an iPod touch, tablet PC, or laptop.

Keep It Simple Stupid.

Don't limit the perception of those screens!

[sznupi]

We see in the summary "e-reader", "e-book"...ignoring that those screens (well, at least Pixel Qi one, that I'm sure of) are great also as replacements for screens in netbooks (remember commercials of those depicting them on the beach, in the park or bright cafe?); generally any highly portable device.

Those are the screens which were supposed to be in place all along. Finally we can have them. Who cares about e-book readers?

Re:Power?

[elcheesmo]

Why on earth do these things appear to have screensavers?

The Kindle does display an image, usually of a famous author, when it's turned off. While displaying that image does use some power, it's a negligible amount considering how many page turns the thing gets on a single charge. And it looks pretty cool too.

Real book page turn times

[Mr. Freeman]

I don't understand these complaints about the response times for the screens on e-readers. They're designed to be easy to read for the purpose of replacing paper books, not replacing LCD TVs or computer monitors. A real book doesn't have instant page turn times and there's a bit of "flicker" as the page flips up and over the current page. I've used a kindle before and it takes longer to turn a real page than for the kindle to refresh so I don't see a problem here.

Seems like people are really bitching that e-readers can't be used for video. My question is why did you buy an e-READER if you wanted to watch VIDEO? You should have bought a laptop.

Re:Real book page turn times

[QuantumG]

You just expressed a view that is completely lost of marketing fools who see features features features as the only way to sell units. This is why every ebook reader also has an mp3 player in it.

Re:Real book page turn times

[im_thatoneguy]

Oh I thought that was because I usually listen to music while reading and the two were a natural fit for sitting on an airplane listening to music while reading.

Sunlight laptop

[jones_supa]

I don't care that much about e-readers, but hey, getting a laptop that could be viewed under full sunlight is just revolutionary for me.

Re:Why not just a labtop?

[aussersterne]

(sigh) clearly Slashdot geeks don't read much.

1. You can't easily carry a laptop around with you for six or seven days in a variety of non-office circumstances. Laptops are heavy and fragile.
2. You have to charge a laptop often. You can't pick up War and Peace and read it cover-to-cover on battery power on a laptop.
3. Laptops are obtrusive or not allowed in many circumstances.
4. WHILE READING, laptops require that they sit on your lap or a desk. ebook readers can be read in ANY POSITION.
5. The user interface of a laptop imposes all kinds of extra work; ebook reader you just open and read, no navigation of user interface.

I'm a serious reader. I've probably read 50-100k pages on my Kindle 1. I've had a personal laptop since the late '80s. I never read a single document on a laptop longer than about 50 pages. If I had to do that, I'd just buy the book. Since acquiring Kindle, I only buy academic books in printed form. For all other reading (newspapers, magazines, novels, non-academic nonfiction) I just buy it on Kindle. Easy impulse buy, easy, flexibile tool for reading. I charge maybe once or twice a week. I can carry my Kindle in a tiny messenger bag, wherever I go.

Re:We don't need e-ink

[dangitman]

e-ink is to book readers what monster cables are to cables, if monster cables were the only cables you could buy anywhere with no lower priced competition.

But Monster Cables don't have any advantages over cheaper cables. Electronic Ink displays do have advantages over other types of display.

This is price fixing.

I don't think you know what "price fixing" means.

Once someone starts selling a fairly priced LCD alternative, it's all over for the e-ink people as their overpriced gadgets will only be bought by hardcore textophiles.

So, how can it be "price fixing" if somebody could just make an LCD-based alternative and take over the market? Price fixing implies collusion among industry players not to allow such competition. But in reality, there are lots of different companies competing for this market with different technology. There's not an agreement among them to fix prices.

I also know that a paperback book sized LCD device could be mass manufactured and sold for $19.99

Well, why don't you produce such a device, take over the market, and become wealthy for life, then?