The Boston Globe has a profile of E-Ink, who makes the displays of almost every reader out there today.
Evidently the company almost folded as it started out by making signs for business. The idea was that retailers could update their signs via pagers, however the pager technology, not the e-ink, wasn’t up to the job. Nearly out of cash they dumped all their projects and decided to continue with just one – making a display for a digital reader that Sony was planning. The rest is history.
Thanks to Dan Bloom for the link.
“…In 2009, more than 5 million e-book readers are expected to be sold worldwide, more than quintuple last year’s sales, according to research firm iSuppli…”
Wow! Some prediction. No idea of the efficacy of the survey but I’m surprised no-one has commented on it. Perhaps it is common knowledge and I missed the post, but I thought that 3 million was the upper prediction to date.
I have wondered recently about numbers. There seems to be too many serious players coming to the table for us not to think that they know something we don’t. If it is indeed a quintuple increase from last year, then that might account for some of the excitement and panic. Imagine what that base and all these players and money in the pool might do to the market in 2010.
“…He says this is an engineering sample from a customer that will soon ship an e-newspaper built around it. “We are just weeks away from flexible displays,”…”
“…Before the end of the year, another company — that E-Ink won’t yet name — should release an e-reader for textbooks, which will include illustrations, tables, and other graphics that are difficult to display on today’s e-readers…”
Surprised and wondering.