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I wonder why the e-ink company company is using this strategy. I feel like there are a huge amount of embedded devices that would absolutely love to have a scre

by davemp 6y ago

I wonder why the e-ink company company is using this strategy. I feel like there are a huge amount of embedded devices that would absolutely love to have a screen like this or cannot even exist without a such a screen. But the amount of NDAs, restricted dev tools, and unit costs kill most of these devices in their infancy.

nickff 6y ago
There are two main issues (speaking as someone who has looked at e-ink for products): - e-ink is optimizing for maximum profits, using classic monopoly pricing - because they are optimizing for profits, their volumes are necessarily small, so their per-unit costs are actually relatively high
- davemp 6y ago
  I was thinking along the lines that someone will come along and eat their lunch once patents expire so they won't be able to reap the benefits of scaling. To me, it would make sense to invent in capturing a larger market if e-ink believed that they could compete at scale.
  - wahern 6y ago
    E-Ink seems to spend all their time filing new patents: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-holdings-inc https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-holdings-inc Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit.
    - robinsoh 6y ago
      I'm working in the display industry. I've never heard anyone in our industry talk about this "tarpit" or "locking down". Could you explain exactly what you mean or what you are claiming?
      - wahern 6y ago
        Like many I just assume that the potential marginal profits are too thin to overcome the royalties demanded and the transactional costs of negotiating with E Ink. The market is indeed small, trying to grow it by scaling production is speculative at best, and there are plenty of other investment opportunities. So even if E Ink's royalty and others demands are "reasonable", they might still easily impose too much of a barrier to invite any interest. This dynamic would only be compounded by E Ink apparently spending considerable effort securing its patent position for the indefinite future. There's little potential to achieve a demanding, independent market position short of buying E Ink. The software industry is a great example. It doesn't matter how nominally low commercial software license prices are (and were); the amount of innovation and productivity unleashed by gratis FOSS is incalculably greater than would have ever been possible otherwise. And it inured to commercial products and services just as much as to users directly using FOSS. Even the smallest amount of friction at various points can turn interest away given how transactional costs can multiply, and given opportunity costs. An explosion of diversity and emergence of a rich ecosystem is often a prerequisite to creating even the most speculative market potential. That said, I take your point. It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion.
nullc 6y ago
There may be another equilibrium where they make more in total, but no guarantee that it will be reached if they lower their fee. Say you were getting a million dollars a year totally passively and I offered you an option where your income would temporarily drop to 1% of that but had an 80% chance of recovering to 1.2 million per year after a couple years and a 20% chance of recovering to only 100k/yr. Would you take it? And what if the whole income stream had fair odds of drying up after a couple more years regardless? Sometimes issues like this are solved by finding a risk seeking buyer to take most of the upside in exchange for giving the owner a more secure position. But when the maximum payoff of the high-risk-route isn't high enough it won't attract risk seekers.

by davemp 6y ago

nickff 6y ago

There are two main issues (speaking as someone who has looked at e-ink for products): - e-ink is optimizing for maximum profits, using classic monopoly pricing - because they are optimizing for profits, their volumes are necessarily small, so their per-unit costs are actually relatively high

davemp 6y ago
I was thinking along the lines that someone will come along and eat their lunch once patents expire so they won't be able to reap the benefits of scaling. To me, it would make sense to invent in capturing a larger market if e-ink believed that they could compete at scale.
- wahern 6y ago
  E-Ink seems to spend all their time filing new patents: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-holdings-inc https://patents.justia.com/assignee/e-ink-holdings-inc Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit.
  - robinsoh 6y ago
    I'm working in the display industry. I've never heard anyone in our industry talk about this "tarpit" or "locking down". Could you explain exactly what you mean or what you are claiming?
    - wahern 6y ago
      Like many I just assume that the potential marginal profits are too thin to overcome the royalties demanded and the transactional costs of negotiating with E Ink. The market is indeed small, trying to grow it by scaling production is speculative at best, and there are plenty of other investment opportunities. So even if E Ink's royalty and others demands are "reasonable", they might still easily impose too much of a barrier to invite any interest. This dynamic would only be compounded by E Ink apparently spending considerable effort securing its patent position for the indefinite future. There's little potential to achieve a demanding, independent market position short of buying E Ink. The software industry is a great example. It doesn't matter how nominally low commercial software license prices are (and were); the amount of innovation and productivity unleashed by gratis FOSS is incalculably greater than would have ever been possible otherwise. And it inured to commercial products and services just as much as to users directly using FOSS. Even the smallest amount of friction at various points can turn interest away given how transactional costs can multiply, and given opportunity costs. An explosion of diversity and emergence of a rich ecosystem is often a prerequisite to creating even the most speculative market potential. That said, I take your point. It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion.

nullc 6y ago

There may be another equilibrium where they make more in total, but no guarantee that it will be reached if they lower their fee. Say you were getting a million dollars a year totally passively and I offered you an option where your income would temporarily drop to 1% of that but had an 80% chance of recovering to 1.2 million per year after a couple years and a 20% chance of recovering to only 100k/yr. Would you take it? And what if the whole income stream had fair odds of drying up after a couple more years regardless? Sometimes issues like this are solved by finding a risk seeking buyer to take most of the upside in exchange for giving the owner a more secure position. But when the maximum payoff of the high-risk-route isn't high enough it won't attract risk seekers.