Digitimes are reporting that the chairman of E Ink Holdings (EIH), parent company of E-ink, Hydris, and other screen developers, made a rather ambitious announcement at the company’s 2011 shareholders meeting on June 24.
Scott Liu said that he expects to ship 20-30 million EPD panels in 2011. He also said that the company is continuing to expand production, and by September E-ink should be able to ship about 3 times the screens they shipped the year before.
Has anyone considered what this means for Mirasol, Liquavista, and other new screen tech?
If there are going to be 20 million cheap E-ink devices hitting the market next year alongside millions of cheap Android tablets, where’s the market niche for the new screen tech? They’re relatively expensive, and I’m not sure how many people are willing to pay the premium.
I think we could end up seeing the new screen tech go the way of the Plastic Logic Que or the Kno, both of which were killed by the iPad. What do you think?
image by ryanfb
RSS
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Hard to say. Who thought a color LCD would be something people would want to read on? But then NookColor came along. I see a lot of people new to eInk picking up Nook Touch. They all hate the flashing but drool over the battery life as a rooted tablet. A rootable Andy eReader with Mirasol could be huge.
I think it depends on whether Mirasol can credibly compete against LCDs, rather than e-ink. Unless it’s cheap, it’ll be competing against the Android tablets, because by the time it comes to market, e-ink readers will probably be in the sub-$100 range, possibly (depending on how long it takes) in the $70-$80 range.