E-paper use on the rise, but credibility still an issue

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 07:20

IT Industry - Market

The mainstream market hasn’t yet embraced the use of electronic paper – otherwise known as e-paper – but its use is on the increase as a ‘greener’ rival to real paper.

With predictions that e-paper will eventually positively impact the traditional paper market, there’s already signs that e-paper's ultra low power consumption, a similar user experience to real paper and ‘green’ benefits are attracting interest.

In a report just released, Gartner says that e-paper’s green credentials will boost adoption and, as well as impacting the traditional paper market, it will also have an impact on the retail display sector, a number of consumer markets and the office environment in years to come.

As a display medium intended to mimic the appearance or ordinary ink on paper while being rewritable, and despite disadvantages of poor colour and refresh rate characteristics, e-paper, according to Gartner, will have significant benefits over other display media.

According to Gartner’s senior research director, SJ Chae, "e-paper does have some barriers to overcome before gaining credibility with the mainstream market,” but he maintains that it is, however, “generating a great deal of interest and we expect adoption to increase steadily over the next few years as the technology improves.”

Chae says that one of the key drivers for e-paper adoption is the way it is continuously evolving to include new technologies, with recent additions including touchscreen, wireless connection and rewritable colour support capability into devices using e-paper.
 
“Multiple e-book readers have also been introduced and applications of the technology are now expanding beyond e-book readers to include device displays for phones, clocks and watches.

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