It seems the makers of e-paper have seen their sales grow a thousand times this last year. Also, color is expected to come in 2008.
The article mentions “limitations” such as not being able to play video, but in my opinion, the author is missing the point. E-paper’s potential is not in displaying dynamic content, although that’d be nice. The most important features of e-paper are its flexibility and lower power consumption. Once an image is set, it stays around with little or no additional power.
Since power consumption is such a big part, power intensive applications such as movies are clearly not where the immediate future of this technology lies. This is all about mobility. While tablets are the most obvious up-coming “innovation,” I think we’ll see a lot of better implementations.
So far, there’s the phone and the price tags. There’s also potential in:
- digital handouts
- posters
- picture frames
- clock displays
- status indicators for things like stocks
- a replacement for those monitors in the DMV
- show time display boards at movie theatres
- embedded clothing
- billboards
- signs
- menus
If I had the time or money, I’d be thinking about starting a company in that sector right now… Maybe someone else can do it and let me know so I can live vicariously through them.