Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Ah, but would they have made any money at that price?
Nobody has said what their yields/costs are like.
6in eink screen prices have dropped because the things sell by the tens of millions; the 10inchers haven't dropped because they don't. And those are built off the same (amortised) tech of the six inchers.
Plastic Logic (like Mirasol) has never ramped up to any significant volume so it is stuck with pilot-scale economies trying to compete with mature economies of scale.
This is an old story: C.F. SED - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface...mitter_display
SED missed its window of opportunity to launch (due to lawsuits) and afterwards, every time Canon refined the manufacturing costs to where they seemed competitive with LCD and Plama and announced a target date, LCD would drop in price and creep upwards in maximum size, rendering the tech uncompetitive. After several rounds, Canon gave up.
This is the challenge that every tech seeking to displace LCD (and *maybe* eink) faces. |
The 6" started to sell in the millions because Amazon and Sony took the bold step of going out on a limb, ordering millions and negotiating serious price cuts with e-ink. Meaning the price cuts came first, big sales later.
Back to Plastic Logic, in the business market they could have sold very well. I had, however, the distinctive impression that they hadn't overcome their software problems until the very end, and that was a big part of the reason they pulled the device.