I honestly had no idea that one company supplied most of the E Ink screens used in most e-readers, until this article!
E Ink doesn’t have a literal monopoly on every kind of electronic paper, but it does have an overwhelming grip on the mainstream e-reader market, with very little serious competition. I follow ereader news, but I never really followed news about the manufacturing of the screens or anything. Guess that explains why larger E Ink screens are still so expensive and why progress feels so slow.
That sucks. I want to see more innovation and more variety.
There’s a good deal of money behind keeping screens you can read in sunlight, staying very expensive. Even outside of eReaders.
My old “Moto 360 Sport” watch had a wonderful screen for reading in direct sunlight. I wish my laptop could have a screen like that.
Yep bonded IPS or something like that. It’s basically just a clear glue, but makes the display sunlight readable. Same thing is used in boat instrument displays. It shouldn’t be that expensive, but the price goes up exponentially with display size.
I just wish a wider variety of companies were involved in producing them so we don’t get monolopy controlling it all.
Cartel behavior isn’t regulated on an international level. Or within most nations. So not a lot of chances for that, until there’s some global structural changes.
We need more RLCD devices.
I’m not familiar with those, so I’ll look them up when I get home!
