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> Not to mention the patent hell around eink display technology itself, which thankfully has also slowly gotten some competition. I work in the display industr

> Not to mention the patent hell around eink display technology itself, which thankfully has also slowly gotten some competition. I work in the display industry. I've never heard about a "patent hell around eink display technology" from colleagues, coworkers or even gossip at conferences. I've only seen it on HN, which then got picked up by Boing Boing and then blogs and then comments on HN which referenced those blogs. Surely, if this patent hell was true we would have heard about it. Could you elaborate on your claim and if you experienced this patent hell and which patent or patents you are referring to? Please see my comment history to see why I keep asking about this. Hopefully this time I can get a positive data point where I can learn something unlike what I got the last time I tried to ask about this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27980391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27980391

ev1 5y ago
I'm curious if this is just normal supply and demand or something else too. I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to jailbreak a kindle and just load your own images onto it. A 7" b&w non-backlit eink display would cost several times over that of a 5-6" kindle, which doesn't even account for the wireless chips, display board controller, or anything else, even for a loss leader.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to jailbreak a kindle and just load your own images onto it. That's true because of volume. I would never expect to be able to get a raw panel in volumes of under 10,000 units directly from a tier 1 supplier, I'd have to get it from a distributor and they'll mark up based on the volume of that specific model. If I wanted a 32" OLED display, the cheapest way for me to get it would be to buy a OLED TV and then extract the panel. If I tried to ask Samsung Displays Inc, they'd be laughing me out of the building. For niche or exotic low volume displays, the markup the distributor would apply would be large since they're holding stock for a long time. And yes, displays do go bad in storage because of accidents, soaking, wetting/corrision due to condensation, improper storage. > A 7" b&w non-backlit eink display would cost several times over that of a 5-6" kindle, which doesn't even account for the wireless chips, display board controller, or anything else, even for a loss leader. That doesn't sound right, how do you actually know the costs ad loss leader subsidy? But anyway my original question was about this so called eink patent hell that HN commentors keep talking about.

ev1 5y ago

I'm curious if this is just normal supply and demand or something else too. I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to jailbreak a kindle and just load your own images onto it. A 7" b&w non-backlit eink display would cost several times over that of a 5-6" kindle, which doesn't even account for the wireless chips, display board controller, or anything else, even for a loss leader.

robinsoh 5y ago
> I have never been able to get an eink screen at any cost approaching the Kindle - continually, everywhere, the cheapest way to get started with eink is to jailbreak a kindle and just load your own images onto it. That's true because of volume. I would never expect to be able to get a raw panel in volumes of under 10,000 units directly from a tier 1 supplier, I'd have to get it from a distributor and they'll mark up based on the volume of that specific model. If I wanted a 32" OLED display, the cheapest way for me to get it would be to buy a OLED TV and then extract the panel. If I tried to ask Samsung Displays Inc, they'd be laughing me out of the building. For niche or exotic low volume displays, the markup the distributor would apply would be large since they're holding stock for a long time. And yes, displays do go bad in storage because of accidents, soaking, wetting/corrision due to condensation, improper storage. > A 7" b&w non-backlit eink display would cost several times over that of a 5-6" kindle, which doesn't even account for the wireless chips, display board controller, or anything else, even for a loss leader. That doesn't sound right, how do you actually know the costs ad loss leader subsidy? But anyway my original question was about this so called eink patent hell that HN commentors keep talking about.