E-Ink is the company best known for the e-paper displays found on the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook. Over the past few years the company has expanded their business outside of e-readers and developed luggage tags, supermarket tags and even 32 inch screens to be used in airports. Today, e-Ink has announced that they intend on upping the ante and are going to be developing a 40-50 inch screen.
E-Ink Chairman Frank Ko said in recent interview that his company is focusing R&D on flexible display based on plastic substrates instead of glass, at looking at IoT applications such as e-paper tags for retail and logistics in 2016, Ko said. Germany-based baggage vendor Rimowa and Lufthansa Airlines jointly adopted EIH flexible e-paper displays for smart baggage in 2015, and Taiwan-based EVA Airways and Japan-based airlines are considering possibilities, Ko indicated.
Will there be a commercial market for 40-50 inch e-ink screens? The only people that are employing the 30 inch ones are merely pilot projects in Australia and the UK.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.