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Nice, but I fear that this will go the same way as Eink corp's monochrome displays. They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting themselves to

Nice, but I fear that this will go the same way as Eink corp's monochrome displays. They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display market by pricing their panels far too high. They have also either refused to license their technology to others or made the licensing fee uneconomical. A competent company would have pursued the signage market aggressively many years ago and would have had a massive revenue stream from that by now. E Ink displays have recently started showing up as price tags on grocery shelves, which is promising for the future of low cost, low power displays. I am not sure if these are supplied by Eink or if patents are expiring and competitors are moving into the market.

sukilot 7y ago
signs: https://eink.com/signage.html https://eink.com/signage.html price tags: https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html more: https://eink.com/application.html https://eink.com/application.html Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?
- deepspace 7y ago
  > Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do? Never said that I do, and, yes they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets. My point was that they could and should have done so 10 or more years ago.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    They were. My first employer partnered with eInk back in like 2012 to bring a line of ESLs to market. The reason you're not seeing more of it is because in the US the companies prefer to purchase a "turnkey solution" whereas in Europe companies are more apt to develop custom software to integrate the ESL with their systems. And the major ESL supplier in the US, Pricer, uses on-premises servers and IR to update labels which is an expensive proposition. So you're limited in how you can pilot the technology. I actually think there's a lot of room at the low end of the market to sell an on-premises ARM- or NUC-based server which interfaces with the tags over a radio link and provides aggregate data back to a cloud-based system for control and pricing updates. That would get you the millions of convenience stores who have to pay 3rd-party contractors to do their shelf labels. This would be especially brilliant if you combined a software fee with equipment leases so that your solution is an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost.
  - BinaryIdiot 7y ago
    > they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets Your statement implies this is a recent development but many large retailers, like Best Buy and Kohls, have had these for well over 5 years, maybe even 10 I just don't remember precisely.
    - lightedman 7y ago
      More than 10, as I recall seeing e-ink labels in Circuit City in 1999.
  - neltnerb 7y ago
    Making them full color was a tremendous technical challenge if you look at how they work, for which I have to give them enormous kudos. And they're also pretty challenging to manufacturer... I suspect the pricing reflects the complexity to be honest. I dunno, makes sense to me that you'd first address something where color and large sizes isn't very important, start making some revenue, do R&D on manufacturing larger formats and color and frame rate, and gradually introduce new products as they can be developed. It's not like they've been keeping other color e-ink devices off the market with patents -- they didn't exist until today AFAIK. Other things billed as "color e-ink" substitutes that I've seen consume power in standby (and I keep checking from time to time with fingers crossed). I remember hearing stories about how much trouble they had getting from prototype (circa 1996) which I saw in lab to a model ready for production in 2007. 10+ years of process development to get to where it was in the first kindle. And to be honest I'm not sure another company could just pick up the technology and start producing them in bigger quantities, these things are barely related to other displays at all and I imagine the production lines are super different. Plus patents from 1997 are expired now anyway, so if someone else could do it they are allowed to. Knowing a fair bit about how their displays work, it's one of the few cases in electronic hardware I can think of that really seems to deserve a patent given how much creativity and time it took to start manufacturing, and how much money they had to spend to get it to the stage where it worked reliably at all. We could very easily be in a world where these displays didn't exist at all, plus or minus a few people making different choices about how to spend their money and time.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Haven't they been on sale in Asia for a few years now as billboards ? While LCDs still consume power just to display a picture, it can go very low : see how watches can run for a decade on a single tiny battery ! (I'm not even sure that e-ink would necessarily be an improvement there, considering that you'll want a watch to refresh a part of the screen at least once a minute...)
      - 2rsf 7y ago
        The backlight is what probably consumes most of the power, AFAIK color displays wouldn't properly work otherwise
- ethbro 7y ago
  How many of those have you seen in the real world? Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price labels I haven't seen the technology. Certainly not in large format.
  - jfim 7y ago
    A ton? Carrefour (I believe they're the second largest retailer, after Walmart) has had electronic shelf labels for well over a decade. I haven't seen them in the US, but they're not exactly uncommon in Europe and Asia.
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      Here in the US, Kohl's (https://www.kohls.com/ https://www.kohls.com/) uses the e-ink price tags in their retail stores. They are a terrible application of the technology. They're not bright enough to be legible from a distance, and even up-close their legibility is not great. They just look washed-out and dingy. One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.
      - avianlyric 7y ago
        > One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably. There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional (although some shops also use them to advertise offers).
        nostrademons 7y ago
        The buyer for price labels is the retailer. The retailer's purpose for a price tag is to grab your eye and get you to buy more. If the price tag dissuades you from buying the product, that is a net negative from the retailer's perspective, and they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions on price tags. Don't assume alignment of incentives. From the customer's perspective, the purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. The customer isn't making the purchasing decisions for the price tags.
- robbyking 7y ago
  The price tags would be neat if they allowed you to swipe for additional information.
  - ksec 7y ago
    I was hoping Beacon to do that, but instead in China they now uses QR Code For it. Which is slightly worst in UX but I guess is much more cost effective.
swiley 7y ago
You can get monochrome and 2 color displays very cheap! I bought one a while ago to play around with building a smartwatch but school got in the way, then I graduate and have been moving and my whole electronics lab is all packed up.
kerneltime 7y ago
From what I understand, a lot has to do with IP ownership, this was developed at MIT and any licensing deal is not as profitable as being able to sell a product. Thus, to make a VC/equity funded commercial venture of it they have to develop a product.
- wasdfff 7y ago
  What they should have done is license the tech while developing their product. This little move probably left them billions on the table just by preferring to sit on the tech.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Reminder that patents filed in 1997 expired years ago. I suspect that the lack of competitors has more to do with the incredible complexity of manufacturing them reliably than due to IP issues. Unlike 3D printers which went wild after Stratasys patents finally expired.
  - jonhendry18 7y ago
    There's probably a bunch of patents related to the manufacturing process or mechanisms.
ATsch 7y ago
I checked it a while back, and the key patents aren't due to expire for several more years. I recall 2024, but with einks patent moat, it will probably take until the 2030s to see real alternatives in the space.
wvh 7y ago
Grocery stores here have had those e-ink price tags for a few years already, so I guess at least those are not expensive in bulk. Not sure if the same economy of scale applies to the larger screens or if there are still technological difficulties at large sizes. I wonder if there are any noticeable economical effects of being able to update prices live on the fly with those price tags, or if it's purely a matter of convenience.
amluto 7y ago
The NDA required to buy a sample also doesn’t help.
alias_neo 7y ago
About 7 years ago I moved to one of the most affluent parts of the UK (outside of London) and had my mind blown when every item on the shelf in the tastefully decorated Morissons supermarket had e-ink displays for every item. As an engineer my immediate thought was whether they update these on-the-fly with different prices depending on who walks in the door (they don't).
- sergiosgc 7y ago
  At least in Portugal, prices on a supermarket can only be lowered during the day, never increased. The logic is: During a dynamic price increase, a customer may pick an item from the display at the low price, only then to be charged the higher price at the register; the store would be found lying on the displayed price, which is illegal. This severely limits dynamic pricing.
  - alias_neo 7y ago
    That's interesting. I worked in a supermarket as a student (in the UK) and was told when I asked (because I like to ask these sorts of questions) that here in the UK, the retailer is not obligated to honour the implied contract. Essentially, if the price is wrong on the shelf, they can simply choose not to sell you the item if you refuse the correct price. In reality, larger stores won't want to upset a customer and generally will honour a lower price. It's more likely to happen when buying a loaf of bread than when buying a TV, or a car for example.
    - closetohome 7y ago
      This is because people frequently try to scam stores by swapping labels and such.
- ChrisRR 7y ago
  Where is this?
  - alias_neo 7y ago
lopis 7y ago
E-Ink as price displays has been around for at least 10 years.
dotancohen 7y ago
> They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting > themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook > readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display > market by pricing their panels far too high. I've often wondered if the E-ink management came from the pharmaceutical industry. They seem insistent on extracting the maximum dollar amount _per unit_ rather than maximizing revenue or making the technology available to those who would benefit from it. I would pay any reasonable - and even a slightly unreasonable - price for a full E-ink phone, because I am a business user and do not care about consuming media. Likewise for a laptop or desktop screen. Yet they are all but unavailable!
- int_19h 7y ago
  eInk smartphones, at least, are around: Hisense, Kingrow. Hisense just announced one with a color screen yesterday. They are still very niche devices, though. Onyx made a similar thing back in 2013, but they never followed up because it didn't sell well. FWIW, I do have a Kingrow K1, and I like it for what it is, which is a 5" Kindle that can also run the occasional Android app (like, say, OsmAnd or Kiwix). It's an excellent off-the-grid device due to battery life, which is precisely what I got it for. But for business use, I don't see much point - a dedicated business device to me would be something like Cosmo Communicator or Unihertz Titan.
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    You might like the Barnes and Noble Nook 3. It's a terribly underpowered eink book reader, but Android apps and a launcher can be easily installed. I use it for Ankidroid. It runs Android 4.4 (API 19 I believe) but many apps still support that version.
    - int_19h 7y ago
      It doesn't have an SD card slot, on top of having little internal storage. This is a common problem with eInk readers, even though many do run Android - they either don't have an SD slot at all, or if they do, it's SDHC (and thus 32 Gb). With K1, I have a 400 Gb card in there that's loaded with stuff - not only my entire Kindle library, but also Kiwix loaded with offline Wikipedia and a bunch of other wikis, OsmAnd topo maps etc. Between that, and several days of battery life with occasional use, it's perfect for multi-day hikes out in the boonies.
macewindu 7y ago
> They have also either refused to license their technology to others or made the licensing fee uneconomical. Please share your evidence for this.
techydude 7y ago
100% correct, eInk have been terrible stewards of this otherwise wonderful tech. I was in a meeting with an eInk marketing person and saw a prototype of this display 2 years ago (the refresh time was hellish, 10-15 seconds IIRC, and their suggested applications suggest the refresh rate hasn't been brought down since then). He was relatively new to the company then, and mentioned that he'd reviewed their CRM contacts going way back, and found, among other things, an inquiry about a small eInk display from (my NDA probably prevents me being too specific) a little silicon valley tech start-up making an IoT wall-mounting thermostat, circa 2012. eInk failed completely to respond to that inquiry at all. What a massive lost opportunity. I looked at their display range and had an idea for a demonstrator product - which is why we had the meeting, they wanted 3rd parties to help them develop novel applications for eInk displays - so I asked for data sheets on a few of them. I can't remember if we ultimately had to sign an NDA to get the data sheets, or if there was sufficient behind-the-scenes conversation between him and their Taiwanese owners to pull their fucking head in, but 2 weeks just to get data sheets wasn't a good start. Along with the displays I looked at several of their dev-kits to drive them (before you design your own driver in your own product & get working hardware, so that s/w people can dev code for it before then). They had at least 3 completely different dev-kits for displays in the 1.5 to 4" range. Not only did they have quite different interfaces (signalling, pin-outs, connectors), but all the dev-kits were all based on different microcontroller brands, AND you had to have your own device-programmer for each of those microcontrollers to be able to update the dev-kit's firmware - as recommended by their own instructions before you start work. IOW, they ship dev-kits with outdated firmware, so you have to update them yourself at your own cost. So I had a follow-up conf-call with this guy & someone new in the tech area and basically gave him the "srslywtf?" conversation about this appalling experience. They were appreciative of the feedback, but I never heard from them again. That marketing guy was in a new job less than a year later. I found eInk displays from several other sources and moved on, never to bother with eInk Inc again. The price-tag application has been around a long time now, 5 maybe 10 years, but precious few other applications (San Diego Airport's car-park comes to mind, tho that's ePaper, not eInk (i.e. whole panels, not dot-matrix displays)), but eInk have been completely wrong-headed about how to get eInk to go beyond the near-captive-audience of eBook Readers (which is mostly the Kindle), and the writing was on the wall for that product line to expand way beyond just eInk-based readers a LONG time ago. Sad.

sukilot 7y ago

signs: https://eink.com/signage.html https://eink.com/signage.html price tags: https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html https://eink.com/electronic-shelf-label.html more: https://eink.com/application.html https://eink.com/application.html Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do?

deepspace 7y ago
> Are you sure you know EInk/PVI's business better than they do? Never said that I do, and, yes they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets. My point was that they could and should have done so 10 or more years ago.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  They were. My first employer partnered with eInk back in like 2012 to bring a line of ESLs to market. The reason you're not seeing more of it is because in the US the companies prefer to purchase a "turnkey solution" whereas in Europe companies are more apt to develop custom software to integrate the ESL with their systems. And the major ESL supplier in the US, Pricer, uses on-premises servers and IR to update labels which is an expensive proposition. So you're limited in how you can pilot the technology. I actually think there's a lot of room at the low end of the market to sell an on-premises ARM- or NUC-based server which interfaces with the tags over a radio link and provides aggregate data back to a cloud-based system for control and pricing updates. That would get you the millions of convenience stores who have to pay 3rd-party contractors to do their shelf labels. This would be especially brilliant if you combined a software fee with equipment leases so that your solution is an operating expense instead of an upfront capital cost.
- BinaryIdiot 7y ago
  > they are NOW finally starting to pursue the signage / label markets Your statement implies this is a recent development but many large retailers, like Best Buy and Kohls, have had these for well over 5 years, maybe even 10 I just don't remember precisely.
  - lightedman 7y ago
    More than 10, as I recall seeing e-ink labels in Circuit City in 1999.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Making them full color was a tremendous technical challenge if you look at how they work, for which I have to give them enormous kudos. And they're also pretty challenging to manufacturer... I suspect the pricing reflects the complexity to be honest. I dunno, makes sense to me that you'd first address something where color and large sizes isn't very important, start making some revenue, do R&D on manufacturing larger formats and color and frame rate, and gradually introduce new products as they can be developed. It's not like they've been keeping other color e-ink devices off the market with patents -- they didn't exist until today AFAIK. Other things billed as "color e-ink" substitutes that I've seen consume power in standby (and I keep checking from time to time with fingers crossed). I remember hearing stories about how much trouble they had getting from prototype (circa 1996) which I saw in lab to a model ready for production in 2007. 10+ years of process development to get to where it was in the first kindle. And to be honest I'm not sure another company could just pick up the technology and start producing them in bigger quantities, these things are barely related to other displays at all and I imagine the production lines are super different. Plus patents from 1997 are expired now anyway, so if someone else could do it they are allowed to. Knowing a fair bit about how their displays work, it's one of the few cases in electronic hardware I can think of that really seems to deserve a patent given how much creativity and time it took to start manufacturing, and how much money they had to spend to get it to the stage where it worked reliably at all. We could very easily be in a world where these displays didn't exist at all, plus or minus a few people making different choices about how to spend their money and time.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Haven't they been on sale in Asia for a few years now as billboards ? While LCDs still consume power just to display a picture, it can go very low : see how watches can run for a decade on a single tiny battery ! (I'm not even sure that e-ink would necessarily be an improvement there, considering that you'll want a watch to refresh a part of the screen at least once a minute...)
    - 2rsf 7y ago
      The backlight is what probably consumes most of the power, AFAIK color displays wouldn't properly work otherwise
ethbro 7y ago
How many of those have you seen in the real world? Maybe they're more popular elsewhere, but outside of warehouse store price labels I haven't seen the technology. Certainly not in large format.
- jfim 7y ago
  A ton? Carrefour (I believe they're the second largest retailer, after Walmart) has had electronic shelf labels for well over a decade. I haven't seen them in the US, but they're not exactly uncommon in Europe and Asia.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    Here in the US, Kohl's (https://www.kohls.com/ https://www.kohls.com/) uses the e-ink price tags in their retail stores. They are a terrible application of the technology. They're not bright enough to be legible from a distance, and even up-close their legibility is not great. They just look washed-out and dingy. One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably.
    - avianlyric 7y ago
      > One of the main purposes of a price tag is to draw and hold the shopper's eye, and in that respect they fail miserably. There I was thinking the main purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. Product packaging is meant to grab your eye. Price tags are mostly functional (although some shops also use them to advertise offers).
      - nostrademons 7y ago
        The buyer for price labels is the retailer. The retailer's purpose for a price tag is to grab your eye and get you to buy more. If the price tag dissuades you from buying the product, that is a net negative from the retailer's perspective, and they are the ones that make the purchasing decisions on price tags. Don't assume alignment of incentives. From the customer's perspective, the purpose of a price tag is to tell you the price. The customer isn't making the purchasing decisions for the price tags.
robbyking 7y ago
The price tags would be neat if they allowed you to swipe for additional information.
- ksec 7y ago
  I was hoping Beacon to do that, but instead in China they now uses QR Code For it. Which is slightly worst in UX but I guess is much more cost effective.

swiley 7y ago

You can get monochrome and 2 color displays very cheap! I bought one a while ago to play around with building a smartwatch but school got in the way, then I graduate and have been moving and my whole electronics lab is all packed up.

kerneltime 7y ago

From what I understand, a lot has to do with IP ownership, this was developed at MIT and any licensing deal is not as profitable as being able to sell a product. Thus, to make a VC/equity funded commercial venture of it they have to develop a product.

wasdfff 7y ago
What they should have done is license the tech while developing their product. This little move probably left them billions on the table just by preferring to sit on the tech.
neltnerb 7y ago
Reminder that patents filed in 1997 expired years ago. I suspect that the lack of competitors has more to do with the incredible complexity of manufacturing them reliably than due to IP issues. Unlike 3D printers which went wild after Stratasys patents finally expired.
- jonhendry18 7y ago
  There's probably a bunch of patents related to the manufacturing process or mechanisms.

ATsch 7y ago

I checked it a while back, and the key patents aren't due to expire for several more years. I recall 2024, but with einks patent moat, it will probably take until the 2030s to see real alternatives in the space.

wvh 7y ago

Grocery stores here have had those e-ink price tags for a few years already, so I guess at least those are not expensive in bulk. Not sure if the same economy of scale applies to the larger screens or if there are still technological difficulties at large sizes. I wonder if there are any noticeable economical effects of being able to update prices live on the fly with those price tags, or if it's purely a matter of convenience.

amluto 7y ago

The NDA required to buy a sample also doesn’t help.

alias_neo 7y ago

About 7 years ago I moved to one of the most affluent parts of the UK (outside of London) and had my mind blown when every item on the shelf in the tastefully decorated Morissons supermarket had e-ink displays for every item. As an engineer my immediate thought was whether they update these on-the-fly with different prices depending on who walks in the door (they don't).

sergiosgc 7y ago
At least in Portugal, prices on a supermarket can only be lowered during the day, never increased. The logic is: During a dynamic price increase, a customer may pick an item from the display at the low price, only then to be charged the higher price at the register; the store would be found lying on the displayed price, which is illegal. This severely limits dynamic pricing.
- alias_neo 7y ago
  That's interesting. I worked in a supermarket as a student (in the UK) and was told when I asked (because I like to ask these sorts of questions) that here in the UK, the retailer is not obligated to honour the implied contract. Essentially, if the price is wrong on the shelf, they can simply choose not to sell you the item if you refuse the correct price. In reality, larger stores won't want to upset a customer and generally will honour a lower price. It's more likely to happen when buying a loaf of bread than when buying a TV, or a car for example.
  - closetohome 7y ago
    This is because people frequently try to scam stores by swapping labels and such.
ChrisRR 7y ago
Where is this?
- alias_neo 7y ago

lopis 7y ago

E-Ink as price displays has been around for at least 10 years.

dotancohen 7y ago

> They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting > themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook > readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display > market by pricing their panels far too high. I've often wondered if the E-ink management came from the pharmaceutical industry. They seem insistent on extracting the maximum dollar amount _per unit_ rather than maximizing revenue or making the technology available to those who would benefit from it. I would pay any reasonable - and even a slightly unreasonable - price for a full E-ink phone, because I am a business user and do not care about consuming media. Likewise for a laptop or desktop screen. Yet they are all but unavailable!

int_19h 7y ago
eInk smartphones, at least, are around: Hisense, Kingrow. Hisense just announced one with a color screen yesterday. They are still very niche devices, though. Onyx made a similar thing back in 2013, but they never followed up because it didn't sell well. FWIW, I do have a Kingrow K1, and I like it for what it is, which is a 5" Kindle that can also run the occasional Android app (like, say, OsmAnd or Kiwix). It's an excellent off-the-grid device due to battery life, which is precisely what I got it for. But for business use, I don't see much point - a dedicated business device to me would be something like Cosmo Communicator or Unihertz Titan.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  You might like the Barnes and Noble Nook 3. It's a terribly underpowered eink book reader, but Android apps and a launcher can be easily installed. I use it for Ankidroid. It runs Android 4.4 (API 19 I believe) but many apps still support that version.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    It doesn't have an SD card slot, on top of having little internal storage. This is a common problem with eInk readers, even though many do run Android - they either don't have an SD slot at all, or if they do, it's SDHC (and thus 32 Gb). With K1, I have a 400 Gb card in there that's loaded with stuff - not only my entire Kindle library, but also Kiwix loaded with offline Wikipedia and a bunch of other wikis, OsmAnd topo maps etc. Between that, and several days of battery life with occasional use, it's perfect for multi-day hikes out in the boonies.

macewindu 7y ago

> They have also either refused to license their technology to others or made the licensing fee uneconomical. Please share your evidence for this.

techydude 7y ago

100% correct, eInk have been terrible stewards of this otherwise wonderful tech. I was in a meeting with an eInk marketing person and saw a prototype of this display 2 years ago (the refresh time was hellish, 10-15 seconds IIRC, and their suggested applications suggest the refresh rate hasn't been brought down since then). He was relatively new to the company then, and mentioned that he'd reviewed their CRM contacts going way back, and found, among other things, an inquiry about a small eInk display from (my NDA probably prevents me being too specific) a little silicon valley tech start-up making an IoT wall-mounting thermostat, circa 2012. eInk failed completely to respond to that inquiry at all. What a massive lost opportunity. I looked at their display range and had an idea for a demonstrator product - which is why we had the meeting, they wanted 3rd parties to help them develop novel applications for eInk displays - so I asked for data sheets on a few of them. I can't remember if we ultimately had to sign an NDA to get the data sheets, or if there was sufficient behind-the-scenes conversation between him and their Taiwanese owners to pull their fucking head in, but 2 weeks just to get data sheets wasn't a good start. Along with the displays I looked at several of their dev-kits to drive them (before you design your own driver in your own product & get working hardware, so that s/w people can dev code for it before then). They had at least 3 completely different dev-kits for displays in the 1.5 to 4" range. Not only did they have quite different interfaces (signalling, pin-outs, connectors), but all the dev-kits were all based on different microcontroller brands, AND you had to have your own device-programmer for each of those microcontrollers to be able to update the dev-kit's firmware - as recommended by their own instructions before you start work. IOW, they ship dev-kits with outdated firmware, so you have to update them yourself at your own cost. So I had a follow-up conf-call with this guy & someone new in the tech area and basically gave him the "srslywtf?" conversation about this appalling experience. They were appreciative of the feedback, but I never heard from them again. That marketing guy was in a new job less than a year later. I found eInk displays from several other sources and moved on, never to bother with eInk Inc again. The price-tag application has been around a long time now, 5 maybe 10 years, but precious few other applications (San Diego Airport's car-park comes to mind, tho that's ePaper, not eInk (i.e. whole panels, not dot-matrix displays)), but eInk have been completely wrong-headed about how to get eInk to go beyond the near-captive-audience of eBook Readers (which is mostly the Kindle), and the writing was on the wall for that product line to expand way beyond just eInk-based readers a LONG time ago. Sad.