Inside eReader: Paper-Like Display Technology

We have to talk about E Ink Corporation to fully understand today's eReader market and technology.

Scan through all the competing eReaders in the market, Kindle, Sony's eReader, Nook, eSlick, Cybook Opus. They all share one thing: the same display technology.

The technology is called Paper-like display. The developer is E Ink Corporation, which has been mentioned in this blog a couple of times.

Who is E Ink?

E Ink was founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. It is the leading supplier of low-power electronic display technologies. The technology is indispensable for a digital book reading device that requires extremely low power consumption, allows long hours of reading without repeated charging, and protects the eyes from backlight blast.

The Lab is on the frontline of display technologies. Recently, it talked about future ePaper:

“I believe that the killer application will be eTextbooks for students. This trend has already started and with the arrival of flexible displays and color ePaper in 2010, that market is likely to ramp quickly. Flexible Active Matrix (because the segmented SURF displays are already flexible) and Color ePaper are the future trends.”