Quote:
Originally Posted by Robertb
Dear Sonist:
I did put am article up on this thread two weeks ago that said that there is some talk going around about an 8 inch device. The problem is that only Phillips makes an 8 inch screen and PVI (the world's largest panel manufacturer) does not.
This means that pricing on an 8 inch panel is higher than it is for the 10 inch. Everything is economy-of-scale. The more people buy a certain size, the lower they can charge for it. IF PVI came out with a 17.63 inch screen and enough device manufacturers placed orders... that 17.63 inch would be cheaper than a 10 inch. By the way... there is NO talk of a 17.63 screen.
So, iRex tried the 8 inch concept to reduce the cost but found it to be even more expensive, I surmize.  The project appears to be dropped for now.
Both Jinke and Netronix are far along with the 9.7 inch anyway and PVI will be cranking out 9.7 Flexi at the end of March perhaps. So, with the advent of the 9.7 inch screen anyway...there is even less interest in the 8 inch (which initially was thought as a stop-gap measure as the 9.7 inch in glass cracked often).
Does this help to clarify?
Robert B |
Ultimately does it also not depend on the physical size of the sheets the displays are cut from? I do not know the production process of eink (or even LCD) displays today. But once was a time that LCD's were made in large sheets then cut/stamped out of that larger sheet. It was the reason we ended up with the display sizes we did...production and sheet size was geared toward maximum yields from the larger sheet. Some sizes lead to too much wasted material and the mfg still needs to charge for the entire sheet even if, say, there is a 25% fewer number of displays per sheet. So the actual total number of viable screens yielded from any single sheet master sheet is what dictates the cost.
Of course if the production process is different today (and we are talking 15ish years later so it very well could be) something seemingly as simple as an 8" display could cost the device maker 2x more per display because the viable screens/master sheet is far less. Plus also the layers containing the electronics are also engineered to allow for the desired stamped out size so a change, again, requires a revisit to the layout/design of the layer itself.
BTW, do you happen to know what the current (even an estimate is cool) but what is the current production ratio of bad displays/good displays for eink? That info might still be a fairly proprietary number but as a consumer knowing it would certainly explain, and make more palatable, the high cost of the displays right at this microsecond in time.