Korea-based LG Display (LGD) will reportedly offer lower-than-average prices for electrophoretic displays (EPDs) in order to land orders from China electronic reading device (e-book) makers, according to market sources.

According to LGD, the company has been mass producing EPDs since the first half of 2008, but it declined to comment on other related information.

LGD’s EPD technology is licensed from Philips, the same source for Taiwan-based Prime View International (PVI), the sources said. LGD’s electrophoresis materials are also supplied by E-Ink, the sources added. [via digitimes]

Prime View International is gearing up for mass production of flexible electrophoretic displays (EPDs) by the second quarter of 2009, with production of color displays soon to follow. The devices are the world’s first flexible active matrix EPD made in a volume thin film transistor (TFT) fab.  The move is in response to what the company believes is a new wave in the e-reading revolution. Much of the work will be done at Hydis, PVI’s Korean subsidiary. Since acquiring Hydis in mid-2008, PVI has shifted its EPD production to Hydis’ three facilities.

Prime View manufactures active matrix e-paper displays using TFT technology for the backplane with an electrophoretic frontplane using E Ink’s technology. The displays are made possible by a combination of MagicMirrorÒReflective Technology and the EPLaRprocess developed by Philips Research, to which PVI now has exclusive license. The company claims that its e-reading devices have an extensive battery life of up to 7,000 page turns per charge, equal to approximately 20-full-length books. In addition, since the products employ a Si gate (poly Si-gate) driver, the devices are more robust and compact. [via epapercentral]

Seiko Epson just unveiled a 13.4-inch, A4-sized screen at SID 2008.  That’s almost twice as large as the company’s previous display, which measured in at a mere 7.1-inches.

Epson are describing the new screen as being the final stage of actually replacing traditional paper with an electronic version.  It has a 3104 × 4128 resolution and definition as high as 385ppi.  Contrast comes in at 10:1 while reflectance is at 40-percent.

Seiko Epson considers that the company entered the final stage of replacing traditional papers with electronic papers. [via slashgear]

Wacom (Booth 1129) and E Ink (Booth 913) will be showcasing their technologies at the International Society for Information Display exhibition, May 20 to 22, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

Electronic paper with pen input is ideal for reviewing documents on a portable device. E Ink Vizplex displays enable slimmer devices to have bigger screens that are easy on the eyes, even in ambient light. The intuitive nature of pen input makes it easy to navigate, write down ideas, highlight points of interest, as well as sketch or draw. Together the technologies achieve the ultimate vision of an interactive piece of paper.

“e-Paper is opening up a number of new products for displays, including eBooks, Mobile Internet Devices, Smart Labels and Digital Signage,” said Barry Young, Senior Advisor for DisplaySearch. He added that “the partnership between E Ink and Wacom in the application of pen input should increase the breadth of ePaper capabilities and accelerate the growth rate.”

“The marriage of Wacom’s input technology with E Ink’s Vizplex electronic paper displays offer manufacturers unmatched flexibility and creativity when it comes to the design of e-paper based products,” said Stephen Sedaker, Director of Component Sales for Wacom. “Whether giving the user a way to digitally jot notes in the column of a book, or circle an interesting entry in the daily newspaper, people now have the option to interact freely with electronic paper.” [via earthtimes]

Polymer Vision will exhibit the first prototype of the rollable display with full color at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Los Angeles. This is the company’s next step in the world’s transition from rigid to rollable displays.

 “2008 is an exciting year for both Polymer Vision and the mobile industry as a whole”, says Edzer Huitema, CTO of the company. “This year we will launch our first commercial product, Readius®, while at the same time our revolutionary prototypes bring the future closer where mobile devices will be equipped with large rollable displays.”
 
What distinguishes the Polymer Vision displays from all other displays is that they are as thin as paper with the ability to be rolled up to the diameter of a pen. Both prototypes at SID exhibit a record breaking roll radius of only 6mm. The 65k color display has a resolution of 127ppi, while the monochrome display has a resolution of 254ppi, which is the highest resolution e-paper display ever shown.
 
Although these exciting new prototype displays clearly demonstrate the future possibilities of Polymer Vision’s rollable display technology, 2008 is the year of the market launch of the revolutionary Readius® device, marking the first step in the transition from rigid to rollable displays. With a large 5” rollable e-paper display, the pocket size e-reader merges the ‘reading friendly’ strengths of traditional e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader with the small form factor and world wide connectivity of mobile devices. [via polymervision]

Fujitsu has developed a prototype electronic paper screen that tackles one of the technology’s biggest weaknesses: the amount of time it takes to refresh the image.

On electronic paper, screens like those used in Amazon.com’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader for electronic books, it typically takes a second or more to redraw the image on the screen. Sometimes the screen flickers a few times as the new image appears or, as in the case of Fujitsu’s cholesteric LCD technology, the image is slowly revealed in a long sweep across the screen — but it’s a long way from the milliseconds required on other display screens.

To tackle this problem Fujitsu has tried to confine the refresh to just the parts of the screen that need to be changed.

It works best in applications where touch-sensitive e-paper displays are used for things like electronic forms, as the company demonstrated at its Fujitsu Forum event in Tokyo on Thursday.

When a user checks a box or writes in a space on the form, only those rows or columns of the display that have changed are refreshed. Those areas are refreshed at the same speed as before, but because a much smaller area is changed, the user perceives an improvement in performance.

The working prototype was a 12-inch display (about the same size as an A4 sheet of paper) with 768 pixels by 1,024 pixels (XGA) resolution. [via pcworld]

Plastic Logic, the Cambridge company developing a revolutionary new technology for printing electronic devices, is gearing up for product launch and a share of a multi-billion dollar windfall. And it is following a world-class commercialisation model.

Just as Cambridge chip superstar ARM cashed in by having its microprocessors in the iPod which didn’t hit the market until well after the first MP3 players were launched - so Plastic Logic is content purring in the slipstream of fellow electronic reader pioneers.

A senior source revealed to Business Weekly: “The Amazon Kindle, Sony LIBRIe and IRex iLiad are opening up the market for us.

“They are all glass-based and we will be the first plastic-based eReader, giving a much better experience because the display is larger and a lot lighter, so it can be held in one hand.

“It will also be cheaper. Do not forget there were lots of MP3 players before the iPod came out.”

CEO Richard Archuleta added: “The first application of the company’s core plastic electronics technology in revolutionary flexible displays has very exciting market potential. Plastic Logic has made amazing progress and has the backing of a first class investor base.”

Plastic Logic hasn’t revised is opinion that it will be the first to ap ply the new technology to a fully commercial application - flexible active-matrix displays.

The company’s first target market is flexible active-matrix displays for electronic readers. In January 2007 Plastic Logic raised $100m of equity finance to create the first fully commercial plastic electronics production facility which will start to produce display modules soon this year.

A video comparing LCDs with Plastic Logic’s  [via businessweekly]

E Ink Corporation, the company developing and marketing electronic paper display technology, has announced to make its next generation segmented display cells (SDC) available. The SDC products are simple digit, icon and alpha-numeric displays and offer commendable readability in a paper-thin form factor utilizing minimal battery power.

The new SDCs are 40 percent thinner, can perform within a wider operational temperature range, and are more flexible for repetitive 3-D bends or 2-D conformable solutions. They can be used to enhance consumer electronics, PC-accessory, display smartcards, capacity indicators, electronic shelf labels, signage and communications applications.

Russ Wilcox, president and CEO, E Ink Corporation, said that the E Ink SDC display lets the user see any vital information quickly and clearly from any angle, and designers can go beyond their imaginations to design innovative product with this paper-thin and flexible plastic display that can be cut to any shape.

The SDCs are available in organic non-rectangular unique shapes, including holes, curves, and other non-standard designs. Apart from it, E Ink’s SDC platform can be viewed under a variety of lighting conditions from direct sun to low-level ambient light, and provides viewable angle of nearly 180 degrees. E Ink’s Vizplex-based electronic paper solutions are bistable, reflective displays which enable the image to remain for over a year with zero power. [via e-ink]