Mobiscribe unveiled the Wave series of e-readers with note-taking functionality a few months ago. They had already shipped out the black and white model and were taking pre-orders on the Mobiscribe Wave Color, with an E INK Kaleido Plus display. They have yet to ship any pre-orders out and have pushed the release date from April to sometime in the Summer of 2023. They are not accepting orders anymore on this model, likely due to the shortage of e-paper panels plaguing the industry.
I have been talking to numerous suppliers and people involved in the e-reader and e-note space. There is a need for more e-paper panels. This affected Mobiscribe, Readmoo, Onyx Boox, Meebook and Remarkable. The vast majority of meetings have been remarked for E INK’s more significant customers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo, who all have new products launching soon and continuous manufacturing to keep up with demand. This has limited the number of e-paper displays that smaller companies typically access.
E INK hopes that new product lines opening sometime this Spring will alleviate the shortages. They are opening up four new lines at all their existing factories and hiring hundreds of new staff to produce more e-paper panels, front-lit display gel layers and colour e-paper colour filter arrays.
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.
