E-Readers and E-Paper - Technologies and Applications
When: February 18, 2010, 11:00 EST/8:00PST
Featured Speaker: Ian French, Principal Scientist, Prime View International
Cost: $145 per site
Free to Pira Members
Rapid consumer adoption of e-readers, the portable gadgets designed to handle digital versions of books, newspapers and other pages and text, is driving demand for e-paper, the display technology crucial for providing an immersive reading experience.
Organizations ranging from publishers and content aggregators, book chains, electronics brands, network operators and technology start-ups are developing content platforms and devices to exploit new business opportunities offered by the emerging e-book and wider e-reading industry.
Soon e-readers will use flexible e-paper where the displays used in these devices are made on plastic and other alternatives to glass. The benefits of this transition are numerous: Bigger screens are attainable with flexible e-paper because the displays are lighter, virtually unbreakable and thinner. Flexible e-paper is one of the most crucial technological advances that will enable the continued growth of the e-reader market.
Part 1: Overview of e-readers to date
Advances in e-paper technology for expanding e-readers in new markets
- Newspapers, magazines, textbooks
- Document readers/notebooks
Display technology evolution
Flexibility
- PVI-E Inks's timeline and roadmap for flexible e-paper using the Philips EPLAR technology
- Shipping flexible displays to customers in Q4 2009
- What's next on the development roadmap for flexible e-paper
- Adapting EPLAR technologies
- How soon will flexible make glass-based e-paper displays obsolete?
- How many does PVI expect to ship by Q4 2010 - will they double the current e-reader market, or expand it even further?
Color
- Enhance e-readers in textbooks, newspapers, magazines
- Color filter approach
- state of the technology and roadmaps for commercializing color
- Using filters - what's needed from frontplane and the backplane technologies?
- Expected growth in the e-reader market with enhanced color?
- Will all color e-paper displays be flexible?
Video
- Markets
- Roadmaps
- Commercialization forecasts
- Technical challenges to be overcome
LCD flat panel producer's perspective
- An overview of the status/flux of the TFT LCD industry
- What opportunities do e-paper displays offer for this industry
- What comparisons can be drawn - LCDs didn't commercialize and immediately replace TVs, they enabled a new consumer electronic device - mobile phones -
Part 2: Future Applications and Developments
What can we expect in the long term for e-paper displays?
About the Speaker:
Ian French gained his M.Sc at Dundee University under Speare and LeComber, the inventors of amorphous silicon TFTs that are the basis of the LCD industry today. He then worked on Large Area Electronics for more than 20 years in Philips Research. During that time he worked closely with TFT-LCD factories in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Netherlands and France, as well as developing dynamic x-ray detectors thast are now produced in the Netherlands. More latterly he developed the EPLaR method of making flexible displays. Philips licensed this to PVI of Taiwan and Ian was responsible for technology transfer. In 2008 he joined PVI as Principal Scientist, based in the UK and working on the development and exploitation of flexible displays.