Electronic Paper Potential in the Market

E-PAPER'S POTENTIAL IN THE MARKET

Electronic Paper Technology is showing great potential since it has been innovated in the 1970's. It improves the electronic display industries in many great ways. As discussed in the previous posting, it has great advantages which make this state-of-the-art technology unique in function and durability.

Electronic paper takes the display technology to the next level and is potentially foreseen to replace other technologies or techniques which are considered traditional or at least be more preferred by its users.

The purpose of this posting is analyzing the potential effects of the Electronic Paper's potential in the market as well as the current technologies it will be affecting currently or in the future.

• Electronic Book Readers (E-book) which is a device dedicated to display e-books. An e-book is a portable electronic media reader which replaces a typical printed book · The E-book has proven itself as a more useful and interactive tool compared to traditional written books users can edit the content of their readings, store more books on the same device, can adjust the font and size of the text for extra ease of readability, and costs less to produce with eliminated paper and ink. It is also more convenient for the authors since it is easier to publish as well as more profitable [1]. A picture of an e-book is as follows:

• Electronic paper was implemented in a secondary school in Maastricht as an e-paper specialist has started a project in which digital schoolbooks were used instead of books, and that resulted in reducing in books' costs on students [2].


• E-paper technology has been used in France 2007 by a newspaper company "Les Echos", which has introduced an electronic version of their newspaper [2]. By expanding on this technology, the electronic version of newspaper can soon replace the traditional printed newspapers. This will reduce the costs of printing, as well as provide convenience for the readers.

• E-paper display is being used to replace the conventional LCD displays of cell phones, PDA's and most of the portable devices. Motorola has already implemented this technology in its production of the cell phone model F3 [2]. A picture of that mobile phone is as follows:

• The army has invested 43.7 million dollars in February of 2004 for the development process of a small-sized portable information screen for the United States soldiers to use on the battlefield [3]. This will lead in the eventual replacement of the traditional displays being used by the armies currently. An actual picture of an e-paper being worked on by the Flexible Display Center at the Arizona State University is as follows [4]:
  
• Engineers have introduced an Autocad/CAM compatible software with e-paper which has enabled them to elaborate more on CAD drawings, which are used to portray Engineering designs for various projects. This has the potential in replacing the regular CAD program since it is portable and easily used by Engineers to improve their designing experience [5]. For more information please click here


• Since e-paper has the advantage of displaying better-quality images with higher resolution, it has been used for Digital Photo Frames. This could eventually replace the traditionally-used photo frames while giving the users the convenience and portability they need [6].

As the Electronic Paper technology is still under development, new innovations are being worked on in order to optimize this technology. It is meant to be a reliable and cost-effective technology which has great potentials commercially.

AMAZON.com is a widely used e-tailer company and has already introduced the AMAZONKINDLE which is the amazon's version of an e-book reader device. For more information on the amazonkindle please click here.

References:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
[3] http://www.eink.com/technology/flexible.html
[4] http://flexdisplay.asu.edu/index.htm
[5] http://www.sanepr.com/Enggsoft-Group-Launches-the-Latest-Release-of-Industry-Leading-Software-ePaper-and-PMZ-2007_28486.cfm
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_photo_frame