I do wonder a lot about these technologies. Mirasol may well be put into use in 2010 as they plan, but their literature tends to offer varying numbers for contrast/reflectance. They seem to boast 60% reflectance and 15:1 contrast in one place, then change that to 50% and 8:1 in other places.
Liquavista also claims to have improved contrast and brightness a bit over EPDs like Vizplex, though they don't really offer much current information about the state of the tech, and their site and videos are a bit lacking. On the other hand, there was a really interesting picture shown
here. I wish they had a larger, higher quality picture, but even the small one shows quite an advantage next to e-ink (mostly in black state, but even white is about 10% better in the pic), even if it continues to fall noticeably short of paper.
Pixel Qi is going to be interesting and I will probably opt for some kind of device with it as long as the device is useful, but for a dedicated reader, it does not seem to resolve my primary problem with current EPD: Poor white-state reflectance and contrast. It does, however, resolve the speed issue, which is great. Since full operating systems now allow some control over the text anti-aliasing methods, it's possible that fonts can be tweaked to display better on Pixel Qi than on standard EPD-bearing hardware. That's one of the big questions I have about Pixel Qi's readability, and I look forward to trying it out in the future.
Yes it's certainly possible that these techs won't make it far, or will only see commercial products in a few years, but some of these techs already have fabs running and are nearly, if not already, prepared for production.
Of course, E-Ink and other EPDs could keep their hold on the market, and I just hope that if they do, they'll take care of their problems...brighter whites, much blacker blacks, higher resolutions, and quicker refreshes (even if not video speeds)