PVI and E Ink step up e-paper production

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 12 Oct 2009

Demand for e-paper is fast outstripping supply, due to the uptake of e-readers, so Taiwanese TFT-LCD supplier Prime View International (PVI) and E Ink are expanding capacity for making the displays.

E-reader customers include Amazon, Bookeen, Sony and Hanwang in China.

PVI has partnered with Taiwanese panel maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) to source more active matrix TFT backplanes used to make e-paper displays for e-readers.

Backplanes made on CMO's 5G line will be integrated with E Ink's frontplane at PVI's factory.

The agreement, announced in early October, will allow PVI to reinforce its role as a dominant supplier in the fast-growing e-paper display industry and give CMO a strategic entry point in the market as competition intensifies. Companies developing e-paper display technologies, either as front or backplanes, include LG Display, Samsung Electronics, Konica Minolta, AUO, HP, SiPix, Bridgestone, Kent Displays, Fuji Xerox, Nemoptic, Plastic Logic and Wistron, which recently bought Polymer Vision.

E Ink was spun out from MIT to commercialise e-paper display technology. The displays simulate the experience of reading printed text. E Ink partnered with PVI several years ago to make active matrix e-paper modules for e-readers and other applications.

Strategic moves

In June this year PVI made an offer to buy E Ink, to strengthen its place in the growing e-paper industry and provide E Ink with the financing needed to develop its core technology further, scale up production of its e-paper film and reach new markets. To alleviate bottlenecks in the production of its e-paper film, E Ink recently opened a new line in upstate Massachusetts.

For PVI's and E Ink's e-reader customers, the CMO deal and access to guaranteed backplane capacity should result in cheaper e-paper displays.

Though E Ink does work with other backplane partners, including Plastic Logic and LG [E Ink-LG e-paper modules are used in the majority of Sony's e-readers], no other companies threaten the E Ink-PVI monopoly on the e-paper market yet.

PVI's and E Ink's e-paper modules are used in about 80% of e-readers sold worldwide. Sales of the e-paper displays will provide the companies with an estimated $345 million (€233 million) in revenues, based on DisplaySearch data that total e-paper display revenues will reach $431 million by the end of 2009.

SiPix and its stake-holder AUO, one of the largest TFT-LCD suppliers, are making e-paper modules available to potential e-reader customers though no orders have been announced.