Amazon will almost surely keep using E Ink in Kindles in the near future.
But mightn’t Amazon also flirt with rival display technology—perhaps Pixel Qi, perhaps Qualcomm’s mirasol tech—in the coming year or so? No inside information here. It just makes sense.
The 5.7-inch mirasol display to the left is a mockup. But the real one will be along in late 2010 if all goes as planned. Significantly, mirasol actually sips less power than E Ink does, and Pixel Qi offers a low-power E Ink-style mode as well as a thirstier color mode or modes.
Here are more reasons for Amazon to consider mirasol, Pixel Qi or rivals:
1. Color’s strategic importance if Amazon wants to hold the interest of newspapers and magazines, which, of course, are busy setting up rival distribution systems. How effective are black-and-white ads compared to color? And yet really good color E Ink isn’t exactly coming next month (though it’s some kind of color units may show up in late 2010). By contrast, Pixel Qi is already in production.
2. Amazon’s video-on-demand operation. Even now, Amazon is competing somewhat against Netflix despite different business models (Amazon doesn’t offer a Netflix-style flat-rate plan). Might Amazon want to raise the stakes with a device that could display both e-books and movies? Alas, with full-motion video, E Ink’s power requirements can be nasty.
3. The company’s recent efforts in the educational market. Whether for anatomy textbooks or to hold the interest of young children, color rocks.
4. People’s continuing interest in the Kindle for uses beyond e-reading. I use my Kindle to check on Gmail and write short messages (in the “Experimental” Browser mode), but E Ink is s-l-o-w. By contrast, a Pixel Qi display is just as fast as an LCD, which in fact it is. And, being suitable for video, mirasol is also a speed demon.
5. Many consumers’ unhappiness with E Ink’s current inability to give us good contrast between text and background.
Even Kindle Review, one of the most gung-ho K-boosters, has discovered the possibilities of Pixel Qi—perhaps nudged along by the fact that the first hardware company with a firm commitment to the technology is Notion Ink, which will market an e-book-friendly tablet.
Simply put, Jeff Bezos, no fool, would be stupid to maintain an E Ink-only approach when many consumers will want alternatives.
I think Amazon’s primary focus will be (and should be) on driving down price. That said, their DX machine clearly shows that they’re interested in exploring higher-end experiences. Color would almost certainly add cost, especially if decent battery life was required. But a premium machine with color would be a nice addition to the Kindle portfolio…and show that Amazon is the fastest adapter in the market.
On the other hand, my experience is that much-touted display technologies always take longer (and initially cost more) than we had imagined. Years ago, I heard some wise person say that technology change is always smaller than we imagine in the near term and greater than we imagine in the long term.
Rob Preece
Publisher
Price is important, Rob, good point, but color counts endlessly to a lot of people and could help grow the market for e-books and devices. Amazon could drive down prices by economies of scale.
As for delays, one cool thing about Pixel Qi tech is that it is here now.
Thanks, and I hope your holidays are going well down there. No huge piles of snow in TX, OKLA or wherever you are, no?
David
Thanks, David.
I’ve moved to California so no snow at all. I’ll be heading back to TX for Christmas so we’ll see if I manage to pick some up. The cool thing (no pun intended) about CA is that if you want snow, you just drive a couple of hours.
In the early days of computers, I doubted the need for color monitors so I could just be a color ludite.
Rob
All sorts of visualizations rely upon color coding; both Pixel-Qi and Qualcomm don’t seem to show realistic colors in transflective or reflective modes; it surely won’t be of much use for books on photography but it’ll suffice at displaying Infoviz charts and animations
Drive down price? Pixel Qi will cost a lot less than eInk; no more than an LCD screen. Jepson of Pixel Qi learned many lessons making the OLPC XO-1; she knew that her new screen tech needed to be able to be made on current production lines at today’s screen-makers.
Mirasol sounds like a wonder, and I’ve high hopes for it. But it may well fall prey to a longer development period. We just don’t know what tech difficulties they will run into when they try to make it; remember SED and FED flat-panel technologies, that were going to revolutionize television models?
I don’t see Amazon picking Pixel Qi, though, for the simple reason that they could have used standard LCD screens from the beginning … and maybe have 99-dollar US Kindles on sale now. Jeff Bezos and his team came to the conclusion that in order to succeed, the ‘paper-like’ qualities of eInk were far superior to LCD. And since Pixel Qi screens are LCD screens, that rules them out. Mirasol is another matter … but if Mirasol screens don’t ship in quantity for another couple of years, they will be up against (maybe) color eInk screens.
Myself, I want my slate ARM-based touchpad 10″ Pixel Qi screen running Android…
Where did you get the information that says that mirasol displays use less power than E Ink?
Hi, Jill. From the already-linked SlashGear post:
“Where mirasol shows its strength is in battery performance. A standard ebook reader – such as the Kindle – could last for roughly 20-percent longer if its monochrome e-ink display was switched for a mirasol panel, assuming the same sort of use. As the mirasol team explained, however, once you start pushing traditional e-ink panel refresh rates, up to the point you can display smooth video, and introduce color, power draw can actual go beyond that of a regular LCD display. A color e-ink video-capable Kindle would last roughly a day using the same battery; meanwhile the same unit with a mirasol panel would last around a week.”
Thanks,
David