Is eInk Sinking?

Apart from basic Amazon Kindles what other eink devices are selling today. It could be said that even the Kindle could soon be on Fire. The fact is that the ‘loookie likie’ devices that once littered the market are today being usurped by AMOLED smartphones and tablets. The best measure for this decline came today as E Ink Holdings Inc. shares slumped some 6.9% (the lowest close since July 1, 2009) on the news of the company’s December sales which had slid 84% from a year earlier!

Fourth quarter sales were only down 4% from the third quarter and overall annual sales were up 53% However, E Ink alarmingly reported that its December consolidated sales were down 55% from November and also down 57% from a year earlier...

Investors may see this as a temporary sales issue, but some will see eink has had its day as we know it today and is unlikely to bounce back and that far from a seasonal dip it could be a sudden decline. We have seen yet another supplier BeBook bite the dust and its hard to see any real action other than basic Kindles..

Samsung and Apple Lock Horns

We handed in our old and trusty HTC Hero Android last week which now some two years on is showing its age. We looked hard at what was on offer from operating systems, hardware and networks and choose not to wait for Ice cream sandwich and choose the Samsung Galaxy S 2 running gingerbread. It isn’t until you actually get your hands on the latest Samsung technology that you appreciate the real threat they pose to Apple today.

In just a handful of days, iPhone users who have seen my smartphone have been taken aback and old iPhone users are clearly jealous. The thing that won it over the other Android for us was the quality and size of the AMOLED screen and its lightness and thin profile. The thing that won it over the iPhone was the growing position and offer of Android. We didn’t consider the others as serious contenders. Samsung also offers the tight integration of many apps and superb communications. It even came preloaded with the majority of apps and social services we use including BBC iPlayer which is as good as watching TV and of course for us free Sykpe, GTM app and much more.

Samsung is now locked in patent wars in some 10 countries with Apple and its isn’t the one way traffic some would have you believe. Samsung is trying to even ban sales of Apple's latest iPhone on alleged patent infringements in Australia, Japan, France and Italy. Apple has preliminary injunctions against some Samsung products in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands, and is trying block US sales of some Samsung models. Samsung has also appealed against an Australian court's decision to block the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet and a full court hearing is scheduled for later this month.

The battle is not just about phone patents but also tablet ones too as these two giants tussle for what is a huge global market. To top it all and little know to many, is the fact that even Apple buys chips and displays from the South Korean giant!

We now have the smartphone market growing by some 42% year-on-year in the third quarter and shipping some 115.2m units. Smartphones continue to not only outsell PCs, but the gap is growing. In just three years since its launch Android now powers 52.5% of handsets shipped, which is staggering, given this was just 25.3% only a year ago. Samsung claims to have shipped more smartphones in the third quarter of 2011 than any other company. The Android genie is definitely not going away and Samsung still has others such as Motorola, LG, HTC all pushing the Android envelope.

Is Apple concerned – well yes, according to the recent Steve Jobs biography. Apple’s market share has dropped from 16.6% in the third quarter of 2010 to 15% in 2011 and even though its sales rose from 13.4m to 17.3m, this fell short of Samsung’s 24m.
It’s no wonder Apple wanted to put the Australian case hearing put back till next August, but the judge has set a date on March and feels August is simply too far away.

So we come back to our decision and what we have in our hands today. When I demoed it to someone yesterday they summed it up perfectly by saying I had a true mobile that offered everything and can make calls as well! Why bother with a tablet you can’t slip into your pocket and are tablets really the answer or just a fad?

Do Pixels Per Inch Matter?

How many Androids equal an iPhone? Some would say that the iPhone is better than them all but the reality is that the healthy competition that is now in the market can only benefit one group – the consumer.

Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Dell are all spreading their bets with Windows 7 and MeeGo and Symbian 3 but the reality is that Android is getting the traffic and is a must make for all with multiple model offers. Motorola is clearly one that is pumping up the gigahertz looking at the devices that are coming as competitors for the notebook and of course the iPad. They are already rumoured to be relasing a phone to incorporate the Nvidia Tegra 1GHz apps processor, an iPhone-style gyroscope, Android 2.2 and of course, full Flash 10.1 hardware acceleration.

But the battle is not just about the operating system, how much GHz umph you can get into a phone but also about the display technology.

The new iPhone 4 was has Retina Display which is ultra-high resolution. The system still uses an a backlit LCD display but with advanced In-Plane Switch (IPS) technology to increase resolution, brightness, support a wider viewing angle and increase colour quality. Apple use smaller pixels, more than doubling the number to that in the iPhone 3GS screen. The LCD/IPS combination was first used on the iPad. It is claimed around 300 pixels per inch is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels when a display is viewed some 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes. So at 326 pixels per inch Apple have created a pixel-less world! It could be said they have the closest to print on a small screen.

There are doubters and some who claim 477 is the perfect number but there again its down to the vision of the beholder and someone with 20/20 vision would see it different to someone with less perfect eyesight.

By contrast, top end LG and HTC models and the Sansung Galaxy S will be using an AMOLED display which achieves its effects by using sub-pixel rendering and other advantages are greater range of colours, faster response time, thinner displays, reduced power and no need for backlighting. Samsung claim only a marginally less sharp image than the iPhone 4 and will be only 3 to 5 %. They claim a 30% power advantage which will give the Galaxy S some 576 hours of 3G standby over the iPhone 4’s 300 hours.

Whatever the outcome smartphones are getting smarter and the technology battles rage on many fronts. It is clear that what we will be using shortly in the future will make today’s models look very clunky.