Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft
screen technology changes incredibly slowly - so a safe prediction is that everything will arrive later than you expect (if at all).
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Correct.
Plus, newcomers face an often insurmountable barrier on the economic side: economies of scale. As HDTVs have shown, it isn't enough to cook up a new high-quality display tech; you have to deliver it *at launch* at a price and volume that is competitive with existing, *mature* tech.
That is an enormous obstacle.
Display tech develops slowly because it has to aim at a moving target in both performance and in *price*.
Most contenders end up, literally, a day late and a dollar short.
SiPix is a perfect example.
They didn't really start meaningful volume shipments until Q3 2010 at a price and spec aimed at eInk's 2008 Vizplex. The combination of price and performance would have been quite competitive in early 2009 when eInk was shipping similar volumes.
Unfortunately for them, 2010 saw eInk tweak their product for better contrast (Pearl) *and* their mature manufacturing lines let them double (or more) their 2009 volume so the Pearl screens came at prices comparable to the 2009 Vizplexes. We've seen the result. Not pretty.
eInk itself faces the same challenge as it moves into color and stops being the "entrenched power" and becomes the challenger to LCD. For all that the primary use of eink displays will be static images, video playback is rearing its head as a specsheet issue. Absolute brightness and saturation are going to be matters of debate. And the benchmark tech is going to be LCD. Just as SiPix is struggling to match eInk's B&W price/performance envelope, eInk is going to be measured against LCD. And Mirasol more so.
Complicating things further is that people don't buy tech; they buy *products* using tech. New tech needs showcase products that highlight their strengths and offer a compelling experience. Any color reader is going to be measured against the current market darlings; Kindle 3, NookColor, and iPad.
iPad will offer a cap on pricing; as the Plastic Logic cancellation shows, any high end reader is going to have to justify its pricing against the iPad value proposition. With the iPad selling by the tens of millions on the strength of its multifunction appeal, the case for optimized readers in the same price range gets a lot harder to make outside specialist niches.
Moving down in price, NookColor is the next benchmark. Battery life will be weighed against the NCs bright, sharp and saturated display. And its price. The new tech will likely better the NCs battery life by, maybe, an order of magnitude---days rather than hours---but price will matter. And if B&N proves to be a liberal overlord in their App store, the demon of multifunction might rear its ugly head. What kind of market would a $399 color reader with a week's battery life command against the NC and its daylong life, at $249 or lower? (I'm think NC might hit $199 by spring.)
And then, to add insult to injury, would-be shoppers for color ereaders will get to wonder the value of color itself. With K3 WiFi offering a tempting reading experience at half the likely price of color readers, the question will arise; if the bulk of the value of the content is in the text, why not stay with B&W and save the money?
Yes, 2011 will see the first non-LCD color ebook readers.
But whether we'll see any *successful* non-lcd color readers is not terribly likely.
I'm thinking somebody is going to come up with a way to package a sharp, bright, thin LCD and capacitance screen into a Nook-like casing with 20 hour battery life for under $200 and *that* is going to be the story of 2011.
Might be B&N.
Might be Amazon.
Might be Sony.
Might be someone else.
But the necessary improvements for this product are merely incremental and require no major breakthoughs. If we're looking to predict what we're likely to see in 2011, a killer LCD reader is a lot likelier than an adequate new tech reader.
Of course, the unlikely is what makes tech-watching fun. ;-)