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and if you look underneath it, you'll see my comment asking for evidence which OP never responded to. I'm very suspicious of such unsubstantiated claims. I work

and if you look underneath it, you'll see my comment asking for evidence which OP never responded to. I'm very suspicious of such unsubstantiated claims. I work in the display industry, not at E Ink, but have some experience with using their products commercially as well. As far as I can tell, they're a typical display manufacturer and orient themselves towards their high volume customers. Same as everybody else. If you are a company buying anything less than a hundred thousand displays a year, you shouldn't have any expectation of Samsung or LG or any other display company being willing to listen to or enable your development plans. You buy from lower tier distributors just like everyone else. If there's a market shortage, yes, you'll be the first to feel the pinch because top tier vendors will always have their quantities satisfied first. That's what everybody in the industry does because that's the rational thing to do.

fsflover 5y ago
Honestly, I know nothing about the e-ink industry. What I see though is that every new device on the market has plenty of comments like "I wish it had e-ink display" and yet there are no affordable devices like this. I am sure there is a huge market for it, so where are they? I can only think of one reason: patents. By the way, EFF confirm that the patent system is broken: https://www.eff.org/fa/issues/patents https://www.eff.org/fa/issues/patents.
- ruph123 5y ago
  > ... yet there are no affordable devices like this. Watchy costs about $60 [0]. There is also a dude who put together a guide with how to make one yourself and even lists the components [1]. An e-ink display for his watch costs about $10 at aliexpress. (The components are pretty similar, screen likely the same one.) If it is possible for some dude on the internet to build their own smartwatch and a crowd funding campaign to do it on a slightly bigger scale, why are not more manufacturers doing it? That is really what I am wondering about. The whole "screen supply" argument seems like it is a non-issue. Is it really patents? Maybe an e-ink screen is just too boring compared to an Apple Watch's OLED screen? The other question is why are transflective LCD's so rare? Googling for it, literally only Amazfit seems to still make them. [0]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy [1]: https://github.com/pauls-3d-things/espWatchOS https://github.com/pauls-3d-things/espWatchOS [2]: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32846836344.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4d1uskWf https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32846836344.html?spm=a2g0s.90...
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > the market has plenty of comments like "I wish it had e-ink display" and yet there are no affordable devices like this > I am sure there is a huge market for it, so where are they? I can only think of one reason: patents. That's the equivalent of saying, "I wish it had transparent OLED display and yet there are no affordable devices like this". A good analogy would be like looking at the sports car market, and saying Ferraris aren't affordable because of patents. There's numerous reasons why display companies like E Ink and others are unable to make such panels "affordable" because their costs are higher than said price. The dominant reason that I'm aware of is volume. If you're not producing at least a million displays a month, then you can't justify building up a bespoke production line so instead you'll have to repurpose a modified LCD production line for your product and so you'll have lower yields. At larger sizes, you'll even have to kerf by hand. Don't even start thinking about laminating touchscreens, as you'll then start dropping your yields further. It is simple to prove this. Look at E Ink display pricing between say 2002 and today. Their sweetspot is the Amazon sized display and that price has declined dramatically because they achieved volume for only that display. Everything else has stayed around the same price or some have even gone up in price since there's no volume around it. People aren't interested in paying 6 grand for a 32 inch black and white panel and nobody is willing to pony up an order for a million of those even if they could get the price down to 1 grand. No volume, no affordable price. That's the simple truth of the display industry. Patents barely have any effect as far as I can tell. Everybody in the industry has them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

fsflover 5y ago

Honestly, I know nothing about the e-ink industry. What I see though is that every new device on the market has plenty of comments like "I wish it had e-ink display" and yet there are no affordable devices like this. I am sure there is a huge market for it, so where are they? I can only think of one reason: patents. By the way, EFF confirm that the patent system is broken: https://www.eff.org/fa/issues/patents https://www.eff.org/fa/issues/patents.

ruph123 5y ago
> ... yet there are no affordable devices like this. Watchy costs about $60 [0]. There is also a dude who put together a guide with how to make one yourself and even lists the components [1]. An e-ink display for his watch costs about $10 at aliexpress. (The components are pretty similar, screen likely the same one.) If it is possible for some dude on the internet to build their own smartwatch and a crowd funding campaign to do it on a slightly bigger scale, why are not more manufacturers doing it? That is really what I am wondering about. The whole "screen supply" argument seems like it is a non-issue. Is it really patents? Maybe an e-ink screen is just too boring compared to an Apple Watch's OLED screen? The other question is why are transflective LCD's so rare? Googling for it, literally only Amazfit seems to still make them. [0]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy [1]: https://github.com/pauls-3d-things/espWatchOS https://github.com/pauls-3d-things/espWatchOS [2]: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32846836344.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4d1uskWf https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32846836344.html?spm=a2g0s.90...
robinsoh 5y ago
> the market has plenty of comments like "I wish it had e-ink display" and yet there are no affordable devices like this > I am sure there is a huge market for it, so where are they? I can only think of one reason: patents. That's the equivalent of saying, "I wish it had transparent OLED display and yet there are no affordable devices like this". A good analogy would be like looking at the sports car market, and saying Ferraris aren't affordable because of patents. There's numerous reasons why display companies like E Ink and others are unable to make such panels "affordable" because their costs are higher than said price. The dominant reason that I'm aware of is volume. If you're not producing at least a million displays a month, then you can't justify building up a bespoke production line so instead you'll have to repurpose a modified LCD production line for your product and so you'll have lower yields. At larger sizes, you'll even have to kerf by hand. Don't even start thinking about laminating touchscreens, as you'll then start dropping your yields further. It is simple to prove this. Look at E Ink display pricing between say 2002 and today. Their sweetspot is the Amazon sized display and that price has declined dramatically because they achieved volume for only that display. Everything else has stayed around the same price or some have even gone up in price since there's no volume around it. People aren't interested in paying 6 grand for a 32 inch black and white panel and nobody is willing to pony up an order for a million of those even if they could get the price down to 1 grand. No volume, no affordable price. That's the simple truth of the display industry. Patents barely have any effect as far as I can tell. Everybody in the industry has them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]