PVI Color E-Ink Display to make year end debut

Prime View International, makers of Electrophoretic display or EPD seems to be in a hurry with their color E Ink project and have set a December 2010 time line by which time it wants products graced with its color E Ink display to make it to the market. The new deadline has been revealed by none other than the company chairman Scott Liu and is a few months ahead of the 2011 first quarter deadline that was earlier envisaged.

The latest e-reader news has it that the color displays are in an advanced stage of development and samples have already been provided to leading e-reader manufacturers which includes Amazon and Barnes & Noble among others though there is no definite partnership reached with any e-reader manufacturer as of now. Also, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos almost ruling out color kindles – he was recent quoted as saying a color Kindle is “a long way out” – its highly unlikely for a PVI color E Ink display to feature in a Kindle anytime soon.

In the meantime, the third quarter of this year will see the launch of a fresh batch of e-readers equipped with PVI’s monochrome display though most of the action is likely to be restricted to the Chinese market. PVI too has high hopes of the e-reader market in China and is extremely bullish of a strong performance there. The company believes the e-reader market in China is expected to grow to become 20 percent of the world e-reader market. It was late last year that PVI had acquired the Boston based E Ink Corp. in a deal worth US $215 million. PVI used to be the largest customer of E Ink and it alone accounted for more than half of E Ink’s total revenue before the acquisition. Now with E Ink under the control of PVI, anyone who is into manufacturing of e-readers and wants E Ink will have to turn to PVI.

In another development, PVI has ruled out entering the e-reader market with its own branded e-readers. This should put to rest what was being speculated for a while now that with a virtual monopoly in E Ink displays for almost all the major e-readers, its but just a matter of time for PVI to come up with its own e-reader. However, PVI CEO has denied this and said, “We won’t produce any PVI-branded e-readers since Amazon, Narnes & Noble and other well known e-reader firms are our customers, we won’t be making an e-reader that would in any way compete with our valued customers.”

Keep watching for more e-reader news.

Sovan Mandal

Senior Writer at Good e-Reader | sovy@goodereader.com | Website | + posts

With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.