Another Day and Still Eink Keeps Trying

We have seen so many eInk 'lookie likie' ebook readers we are somewhat punch-drunk and find ourselves asking how many will survive, what differentiates one from another, and if eInk is a mere digression and limited life technology when it comes to ebooks?

E Ink claim that they will have a colour e-paper reading panel by the 1st quarter of 2011. The claim by Sriram Peruvemba, VP of marketing at EInk in PC World is that they will introduce colour e-paper displays shortly. Although prototypes are working in E Ink’s labs, it will take up to 3 years to actually reach the market. Is it too little too late? Will black and white readers survive long enough under the threat of full media and colour tablets, mobiles and netbooks?

Then there is Qualcomm’s mirasol technology which is planned with touchscreens later this year. You can see Mirasol technology at their web site www.mirasoldisplays.com/reader.

Then there is the likes of new ereader entrants such as Asus and their DR-900. The DR-9000 has a 9”, monochrome touch-screen display with a 1,024x768 resolution and is no thicker than a pencil. Asus has already proved themselves in the laptop world, so is this an natural extension? The DR-900 is WiFi and has a built in Web browser and can access RSS feeds but appears to be very limited in the formats it supports and today can’t support DRM files.

Can I UseYour Screen Please?

Just when you thought that the keyboard was going to die and that touch screens were the new thing Asus have caused a stir at CeBIT with a keyboard!

Reality is that it isn’t a keyboard so much as a PC inside a keyboard. The thin case host in side of an ASUS netbook, sorry Psion we forgot, n**book. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory and a 16GB/32GB solid-state drive, weighs under 1kg, it's suitably light, has a built-in ultra-wideband transmitter for wireless streaming to external displays. It claims to work within a range of 15ft. However if you can’t find a screen it has a 5” touchscreen with 800x480 resolution.

It's still at the prototype stage, but expected to be fully launched later this year. So has Asus come up with the perfect answer – separate the screen from the n**book and enable users to choose how they display. Connect it to a TV, monitor, eink device a stop trying to develop an all in one solution. However one could apply the same logic to a mobile.

Dream PC?

Back in October 2008 ASUS and Intel launched WEPC.com. The sites slogan was you dream it, Asus Builds it, Intel Inside and it was all about getting people to share their ideas on a community designed PC. Now they want people to give them more thoughts on a Multiple Screen and Touch Interface. You can vote, comment and dream in much more detail about the Dream PC.

Last week they had a little poll from; Extend, Projection, Dual, Dual Touch, Modular Displays and tablets. So it’s no surprise the displays won the day. An extendable screen that is tiny when compact but grows when required.


This is how Asus describe the concept:
The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition, and multitouch, users are presented with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive. Users can use the dual-panel concept in a myriad of usage scenarios, for example as a conventional notebook with multitouch screens, a virtual keyboard and touchpad; a multimedia hub, in which both dual panels could combine to form a larger display for widescreen entertainment; or an E-book mode in which users can hold the dual panel concept notebook just like they would a conventional book while flipping pages through intuitive gestures or by touch. These concepts aim to bring convenience to the user through technological innovations and user-centric design.

The dual screen looks just like a book!

The Devices are a Changin

When the economy and consumer spending slows down then hard choices usually follow. We all may want the biggest and most expensive, but when given a reality check, common sense often prevails. PC PRO today reports that the shift to spending on netbooks is continuing apace and that they now account for three out of ten consumer laptop sales in Europe.3.6 million netbooks were sold in Europe in the last quarter of 2008 and Western Europe accounted for more than 80% of overall European sales. Acer with 30.3% and Asus with 28% dominate the market with the likes of HP. Dell and Samsung collectively only having some 17.9%. Clearly consumer are deterred by ‘cheaper’ and newer brands and the ‘old guard is slowly changin’.

What is interesting is that the demand todate has been predominantly consumer driven but as notebook specifications improve, 3G is integrated, the screen size increases to 10” and times gets tighter it is easy to envisage notebooks exploding onto the business sector.

Asus has already stated that it will have a Eee PC with touchscreen running on Windows 7 by the summer. As we have written many times it is now easy to predict that the consumer media battleground will be between the notebook and smartphone. The laptop will survive but will be the heavy duty engine and its portability become less appealing. Dedicated media players such as games will have to fight on the enriched experience ticket and ereaders will suffer as they become marginalised and become increasingly one dimensional, eink constrained and neither one think or the other. The other big threat to the ereaders is that you can do what they do on every other device but they can’t do what ever other device does.