Tag Archives: eink

Sony moving in the right direction: Emerging displays and touch playing a key role

August 5, 2013

Sony Corporation has lost money five years in a row. However, during both this May and August Sony announced good news: it swung back to a profit in its fiscal fourth quarter (FYQ4 ended on March 31st) and fiscal first quarter (FYQ1 ended on June 30th). The main contribution to this new profitability is “lifted by the first black ink in 3 years at its long-struggling TV business” as indicated by Wall Street Journal on August 1.

So far, I think the new CEO Kazuo Hirai is steering Sony in the right direction, and emerging display and touch technologies are playing a key role:

  • As we covered in the monthly “Touch and Emerging display report”, Sony has released several 4K TVs. Sony has adopted QD Vision’s quantum dots on some of its TVs for better color and lower power consumption.
  • Sony is still manufacturing AMOLED professional monitors and successfully selling these at high price, leading to profitability
  • Sony is planning a flexible e-Paper display (from E Ink) tablet with pen-writing function by end of this year.
  • Sony added more pen-writing notebook PCs.
  • Recently Sony has unveiled SmartWatch 2 with a larger 1.6” 220×176 touch display (the original SmartWatch has a 1.3” 128X128 OLED display).

Figure: Sony upcoming flexible display tablet with pen

E ink Sony Mobius

Photo by: Touch Display Research Inc.

Although a profitable quarter is good news, the profit of FYQ1 is only 3.5 billion Yen, a 0.2% profit margin. It is still left to be seen if Sony can maintain profitability the entire fiscal year.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team

 

E Ink Flexible and Color Displays Leap Ahead at SID 2013 Displayweek

May 23, 2013

I’m in beautiful Vancouver, BC this week to attend and give a speech at the SID 2013 Displayweek conference.

At E Ink’s exhibition booth, their director of product management Giovanni showed me several flexible electrophoretic display products and color displays. As I blogged in January, flexible and color displays were the main focus of E Ink at the Flextech Alliance’s Flexible Display 2013 conference, but at this SID is one big leap ahead. The flexible display jumped from a 4.3” active matrix announced in January, to 13.3” flexible active matrix in this May demonstration. The color display added the three color pigment, which they called “Spectra.”

Figure: E Ink booth at SID 2013 Displayweek conference

E ink spectra

Source: Jennifer Colegrove

How does E Ink’s “Spectra” work, and how fast does it switch? When will E Ink’s flexible active matrix display be on the market? What’s the technology used in the 13.3” flexible active matrix display? What’s the flexible active matrix display roadmap through 2015? A detailed analysis will be in the upcoming “Touch and Emerging Display Monthly Report”, May 2013 issue.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer and team