By Juli Monroe I’ve been reading posts saying that “E-Ink is dead” for, well, years now. The general argument goes something like this: “People really want tablets. They don’t want a single-function device. E-ink is too slow to refresh and isn’t good for anything except reading books. And people don’t read anyway.” All of those things are true (well, except for that last one), but it misses the point. I’m active on Kindleboards, an online forum for Kindle lovers, and discussion, purchasing and love for the E Ink Kindles is alive and well. The Kindle Paperwhite was sold out through most of the holiday season,...

If you happen to have already read our last post, in which we referenced a Reuters article about the unfortunate decline in popularity of the e-reader, you might also be interested in checking out a few recent news items about the financial misfortunes of the Taiwan-based E Ink Holdings (formerly the E Ink Corporation). As we mentioned in that last post, E Ink's "monthly revenues dropped 91 percent in two months" at the end of 2011 (emphasis ours). This came after five years of near-constant growth for the company, which manufactures the displays of most Kindle and Nook e-readers. E Ink's massive revenue drop seems to have been largely caused by declining...

E-ink e-book readers are really taking off. E Ink Holdings, the manufacturer of the screens used by most e-ink readers today, has just adjusted its production estimates upward. The company now estimates that by the end of 2011, it will have shipped 25 to 30 million screens this year. Can you imagine that? Potentially 30 million new e-ink e-book readers could be manufactures by the end of the year using screens from just this one company. Hard to believe that just a few years ago we were all wondering if e-readers would ever take off. (Found via eBookNewser.)...

E Ink and Hanvon have announced the first color e-ink e-book reader, scheduled for release in China in March. The new color paper will be capable of displaying thousands of colors and 16 levels of greyscale. As with old-fashioned black-and-white e-ink, it will only use power to change the display, not to maintain it. The New York Times notes that Hanvon is the largest e-reader seller in China, with a 78% share of the market. In a country with as many potential customers as China, that’s a pretty good position to be in. The device will cost about $440,...

Contributor Dan Bloom has published a long article about E Ink in the Taiwan Review. He discusses the company's past, present and future. Here's a snippet about some of the stuff they are working on: PVI is also working to deploy E Ink to render text on devices other than e-readers, Scott Liu says. Imagine a device the size of a credit card with a small screen that runs on E Ink technology and can be used for more than two years on a single battery charge. That is the future, Liu says, and other products could include smart...

Yuan Tai Technologies Inc. (8069:TW) announced today that it has changed the international version of its name from Prime View International (PVI) to E Ink Holdings Incorporated (E Ink). This change was approved at the Annual General Meeting held today. The full press release is here. Thanks to Dan Bloom for the heads up....