Jon Stokes at Ars Technica wonders whatever happened to all the Chinese e-ink readers that were on display everywhere you looked at CES but are now conspicuously absent from E3.
He points to the examples of the Plastic Logic Que (or “QUE”) and the Sprint/Hearst Skiff, two of the most anticipated devices from early days. The Que was supposed to be in release by now, but has been plagued by delays, and Plastic Logic may even be taking offers for sale (though the person who seemed to imply it has since denied it).
The Skiff, as we mentioned the other day, was just bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., but all they wanted was the publishing software and not the device (which Hearst is still trying to sell to someone else). Of the others, very few are now in sight.
Stokes wonders if the iPad launch scared away most of the companies that had been planning to try carrying such devices. While many still hold that e-ink is easier on the eyes than color LCD, Stokes finds that “carrying only one device is easier on the shoulders.” And there has been a large-enough publishing and media buy-in into the color device to make black-and-white e-ink seem like a foregone conclusion.
We covered a story back in January which suggested that all those readers at CES meant the e-reader market was oversaturated. I don’t know if anybody expected the smaller players to shake out quite this fast, though. Apple strikes again?
Color strikes again. The Chinese companies recognize that color will be the way to go in the future, and until eInk becomes color, it simply will not outsell color screens on most multifunction devices. Those that were working on BW eInk solutions are regrouping now, looking for the right tech to buy/back/emulate/copy for themselves.
To an extent, iPad and the revival of multifunction devices had something to do with it. Certainly many of the hardware manufacturers are looking at iPad knockoff possibilities, and resellers want to see what is developed. I’m sure they see higher potential profit in color multifunction devices than in BW dedicated readers.
I suspect most of the products we saw were prototypes created to attract an OEM. When BN and Borders made their choices, the others were left hanging. Getting distribution is hard.
Rob Preece
Publisher
Also, just because the products don’t show up in the US doesn’t mean they’re not shipping. A stroll through eBay shows tons of electronic gadgets that are readily available but have zero visibility here. That is particularly true in the MID category which for the past year or so has seen lots of designs built off WinCE, Android, and other Linux variants trying to go after the webpad/ebook market.
If anything, the iPad now gives these asian vendors a desig target as well as pricing cover; they are no longer working in a vacuum.
Give it six months and we’ll see some action, though to an extent, we already are seeing the beginning of it with the Pandigital Novel which, buggy software aside, is indicative of the products headed our way: 7 inch LCD touch screens, Android, WinCE, or Win7embedded, software, DVD-case sizing.
They’ll do media well, the web adequately and ebooks hit-or-miss (at least early on).
It’ll be a year before the iPad wannabes get their act together and by then color eink will change the game again.
A good time to lay low and see what happens, I think.