I’ve just returned from speaking with a European client about which non-traditional display technologies might be appropriate for future models of the client’s products. Electrophoretic displays (EPDs) — the most popular form of ePaper — was one of the candidates, but the client was understandably concerned about reliability of supply with only two vendors supplying displays based on the technology, and with those two vendors using very different flavors of the technology.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

At the moment, only one of those flavors is being used for commercial active-matrix EPDs. The company, E Ink, supplies the EPD technology embedded in its "Vizplex Imaging Film" to Prime View International (PVI), a Taiwanese company that combines the imaging film with a TFT backplane. It is PVI that sells the completed active-matrix EPDs to customers.

E Ink has accumulated an impressive number of design wins for its passive segmented EPDs and, together with PVI, for its active matrix displays. In the active-matrix arena, PVI supplies the displays for most of the world’s eBook readers, including the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.

So the EPD market looks pretty solid despite the small number of panel makers. And today, PVI Chairman Scott Liu said, essentially, that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet, according to Susie Pan and Rodney Chan of Digitimes. Despite the softness in the small-to-medium-size display panel market, Fu said he expects the EPD market to grow by a factor of 10 over the next 3 years.

We don’t even have to wait until 2011 to test the accuracy of Liu’s words, because he also said the market will double by next year. The shipping schedules for PVI’s EPD customers remain unchanged by the global economic downturn and the overall sluggishness of the small/medium market, said PVI president Y.S. Fu. (Insight Media is spending considerable effort to build cost models, roadmaps and forecasts for the e-paper markets right now, so stay tuned for more news on this front.)

It was because PVI anticipated insufficient EPD manufacturing capacity that it moved last year to acquire Korea’s troubled BOE Hydis, which PVI has now officially taken over and renamed Hydis Technologies, Liu said. Hydis will start producing EPDs in 2009, and by 2010 will have two EPD production lines. Fu expects EPDs to account for 50% of total PVI revenues in Q3, thanks to strong demand for the segment.

Liu said Hydis will be a liability for PVI to start, but expects to make it profitable in nine months, when its current plant utilization of 70% grows to an anticipated 85%.

Single sources have a way of making customers nervous, but this one is looking more and more solid as time goes on.