Today, E Ink (Cambridge, MA; www.eink.com) officially announced the launch of its next-generation electronic ink technology. The improved technology gets a trade name (Vizplex) and a new description: "imaging film" instead of the previous "electrophoretic frontplane." If you think that sounds like the engineers are getting some marketing support, Director of Marketing and Planning Dave Jackson would agree with you.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

I had an extensive telephone conversation with Jackson early this week, and it seems clear the marketing polish is being applied not only to an improved display technology, but that E Ink is also thinking more broadly of system solutions for its customers. In addition, for the first time E Ink and its manufacturing partner Prime View International (PVI) now have a line of standard display sizes and pixel formats. Previously, there was the one standard 6-inch SVGA eBook display, with everything else (like the display for Motorola’s Motofone cell phone) being a custom product.

First, let me tell you a bit about the enhanced display product itself. Reflectance (white) is now improved to 40% from 32% to 35%, and the typical rewrite time for a gray-scale screen has improved from 1200ms (for 4 levels of gray) to 740ms (for 8 levels). The rewrite time has always been better for 1-bit screens (black-and white with no intermediate gray levels). The new film is 260ms compared to the previous generation’s 500ms.

The standard sizes include 1.9 inches for cell phones and other handheld electronic products, 5 and 6 inches diagonal (800×600 pixels), 8 inches (1024×768), and 9.7 inches (1200×825 or 800×600).

Along with the new film technology, which employs new microcapsule and ink formulations, Jackson said, there is a new display controller, the "Metronome," which supplements the existing "Apollo." The Apollo mimicked a parallel printer port to the host system, which made system development faster, but it also required dedicated flash memory, an additional component on the bill of materials costing from $3 to $8, which can add three times this amount to the final product price. Metronome incorporates the needed memory. Either a cost-reduced version of the old Apollo controller or the new Metronome controller can be used with 5- and 6-inch displays, but the larger displays require Metronome.

Pricing is still being refined based on evolving yield data, but Jackson estimates that PVI will charge something like $80 for the 6-inch display in reasonable quantities, with controller.

E Ink expects hundreds of thousands of E Ink displays to be sold over the next 12 months. In addition to the Sony and iRex eBooks and Motofones that are already being sold, Jackson expects a growing range of IT and other applications. Two recently announced applications are pilot navigation information and charts (eFlyBook) from ARINC and washable touch-screen hospital display tablets from eT. Intel has produced a technology demonstrator notebook PC with a sizeable E Ink display in the lid (see photo). Vista supports the second display, which can be driven by a kernel that does not require the PC’s microprocessor to be on, and because the display is so thin, the PC’s lid does not have to be re-engineered.

What we are seeing is nothing less than the maturing of electrophoretic display technology, and there will be an increasing number of products utilizing these displays in the months to come, in addition to the existing eBooks, Motofones, and Lexar Mercury Jumpdrives.

E Ink will be showing the new imaging film and controller, along with applications from 10 shipping customers, at the SID ‘07 Exhibition, being held in Long Beach, May 22 to 24.