Rocket Bomber - article - publishing - snark - Here - let me start a rumour... [UPDATED]

UPDATED 23 September 2010:

I’m changing my mind about the colour e-reader that I think will be out before Christmas: not color e-ink, but Qualcomm’s Mirasol

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/qualcomms-mirasol-display-hopes-to-create-e-reader-tablet-hybrids/

original article follows
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Starting with a year-old article:

electronicdesign.com, William Wong in an interview with Sriram Peruvemba, Vice President of Marketing for E Ink Corp.
11 November 2009

What is the future direction of ePaper? ePaper displays have enjoyed tremendous success in the eBook application (over 40 models launched world wide) and moderate success in a whole host of other applications including wrist watches, smart cards, electronic shelf labels, signage etc. The eNewspaper application is emerging (larger displays, favors flexible display product) and is likely to be a significant market opportunity. I believe that the killer application will be eTextbooks for students. This trend has already started and with the arrival of flexible displays and color ePaper in 2010, that market is likely to ramp quickly. Flexible Active Matrix (because the segmented SURF displays are already flexible) and Color ePaper are the future trends.

When is color coming? We have demonstrated color ePaper and are scheduled to mass produce them by the end of next year. Here is what was said about our color ePaper:

“Then there was E-Ink Corp., which blew me away with a color e-book prototype, a flexible display no thicker than a laminated piece of paper and large-form e-ink displays that would make for low-power, high-contrast signage. Maybe I’m swayed by the newspaper industry’s need for technology like this, but if the future of e-books is as colorful and flexible as what I saw at SID, and if it gets here soon enough, the future might not be so grim for this industry after all.” By Omar Gallaga for NPR

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Prototypes and projected release dates don’t mean a whole heck of a lot.

Business deals, parts numbers, production samples; that’s slightly more promising:

Joint press release from E Ink Corporation and Seiko Epson Corporation posted to businesswire.com
18 May 2010

TOKYO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Seiko Epson Corporation (“Epson”)(TOKYO:6724), a global supplier of imaging products and semiconductor solutions, and E Ink Corporation, the leading developer and marketer of electronic paper display (EPD) technology, today announced a new jointly developed display controller IC. The S1D13524 is a high-performance EPD controller with a built-in color processor for E Ink’s Vizplex™-enabled electronic color paper displays. Targeting color and very high resolution B&W applications, the new IC is based on the same powerful engine as the first two models, the S1D13521 and the S1D13522, but also includes a color processor that allows simple customization.

Found in most major electronic reader devices, Epson EPD controllers and E Ink’s EPD low-power consumption screen technology have been key factors in the rapid growth of the eReader market and the expanding range of mobile applications, such as eBooks, eNewspapers, tablet PCs, laptop secondary displays, eNotebooks, and eDictionaries.

The new Epson display controller includes a high-performance color engine that can be easily configured to match customers’ color and CFA needs. It has a built-in dither function to minimize host overhead, and can be connected to any host processor through a 16-bit parallel or TFT LCD bus.

“IC” for those who don’t know or can’t recall, is an “integrated circuit” – a chip. The new colour chip is built on the same architecture as chips used in today’s e-readers: indeed, in a device you may already own.

This new chip has a part number. Read the rest of that press release; samples of the new chip have been available for developers/prototypers since June, and “Production quantities will be available in Dec 2010.”

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A quick look at E Ink’s Corporate Website reveals that the largest screen they’re currently pushing in the Vizplex™ line is a 9.7” 1200×825px with 150dpi (and given that screen sizes are diagonal measures… hand on a sec, need to run the pythagorean and assuming a rectangular display based on the golden ratio) looks like it’s awfully close to 5×8 — 5.15 × 8.3: same size as your manga, or a common trade paperback.

Mechanical / Dimensional – 9.7” Display
Pixel Count: 1200 × 825 (SVGA)
Active Area: 202.9 × 139.5 mm
246.38 mm (9.7”) diagonal
Display Thickness: 1.2 mm
DPI: 150

That’s the screen size, add a bezel and the whole unit would be about the same size (top to bottom, side to side) as a hardcover book, but only 50 pages (50mm) thick — the same thickness as your current e-reader, just about, as all the internal electronics are upgraded [level up!] but essentially the same.

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Same tech, same manufacturers, slightly larger form factor; and of course the innovative twist is colour.

Make the whole thing a touch screen and I’ve built a category killer: E-reader in a hardcover-analogue-size in colour with a full-screen touch screen, built on existing e-reader architecture and sourcing components announced six months to a full year ago with projected “production” quantities available in December 2010.

Plenty of time to prototype a unit, write the software, test it, and get units out before 25 December.

Hi, my name is Matt, I’m a bookseller and a blogger. I drink a lot. [you have no idea…] — *I* figured this out, this afternoon, just by looking stuff up on the internet. Granted, I went to Georgia Tech, so my knowledge base has more tech-y bits in it than your average-bear bookseller, but this is neither brain science nor rocket surgery:

If there isn’t a touch-screen, full colour, e-ink/digital paper e-reader announced in the next 6 weeks by a major corporation then a whole cohort of junior execs and senior engineers seriously dropped the ball.

(and someone needs to start picking up my bar tabs and hire me as ‘research’ staff right quick)

Heck, put in an order for, say, a half-mil to a million components and pay in advance and I’d be willing to bet Epson and E Ink would be deploying burly men and haughty women with whips to make sure the plants beat those December delivery dates.

I think the telling fact here is that E Ink hasn’t really said anything more about colour since May (their last major press release was about the pearl b&w screens, 1 July, ~2 months ahead of the Kindle 3 announcement/release) — any exclusive deal would handily explain the long silence on colour e-ink.

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Apple has the iPad: and it’s all that, a bag of chips, and guaranteed salvation for your immortal soul — so no new Apple reader this year, or next.

Amazon is doing the incremental-improvement-thing: folks seem to like the Kindle, and the new Kindle is all that folks like and more, with the thinner, slimmer form factor and fancy new black-and-while high-contrast e-ink screen. It’s a lovely unit. And, also, it means there isn’t going to be another Amazon game-changer before 2011 (or 2012).

While the gap between the two (colour touch screen and low-power e-ink) was previously insurmountable, well, this is the future and engineers solve impossible problems before breakfast, most days.

Call it the Rocket Bomber Reader: exterior dimensions 6 × 9 x .25”, screen 5.1×8.3” color e-ink, full touch-screen, android OS (since whatever-Amazon-is and iOS4 are precluded) — and while I have no idea who is going to release it, someone has to — and they’ll likely make a lot of money.

Newspapers & especially magazines have been waiting for this platform — actually, reverse that: Magazines and especially newspapers, as most mags would be quite happy with iPad and Web distribution if they could figure out how to make money off it.

I’d price the Rocket Bomber Reader at $249 (not sure of component & manufacturing costs, but half-an-iPad seems like a good entry point even if I have to subsidize it) and pitch it as a textbook/artbook/comic/magazine reader — though I haven’t seen the colour tech myself.

Re: Colour, Though… we all loved 4-tones-of-spinach-green when the original GameBoy came out (even washed-out E-ink colour might succeed, if it’s the first-and-only-option) — though the Gallaga-NPR quote from that first link points to something special with this new tech.