Archive for the ‘kindle tablet’ tag
More Amazon tablet rumors no comments
Bits of news and rumor continue to swirl around Amazon’s impending tablet. The latest — which, according to Digitimes, was leaked by someone at one of the component suppliers involved in the project — is that Amazon’s 10.1-inch tablet will not go into production until the first quarter of 2012. The larger of two expected Amazon tablets will, according to the report, be assembled by Foxconn. Foxconn also assembles the Kindle ereaders and Digitimes also reports that it is estimated 15-18 million Kindles were built at Foxconn in 2011.
Amazon is expected to release a 7-inch tablet within the next couple of months. Reports have, for several months, had the smaller Kindle tablet being assembled by Quanta Computer.
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Amazon to launch Kindle Tablet in August-September? no comments
That seems to be the latest rumor. Digitimes reports that according to Taiwanese component makers Amazon will launch Kindle Tablets in August-September and hopes to sell four million tablets by the end of the year. This is the time one would expect Amazon to launch a tablet in order to have it ready for the holidays.
The report also claims that the processor Amazon is using is from Texas Instruments. Wintek is named as the supplier of the touch panels.
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SID 2011 no comments
The Society of Information Display International Symposium (SID) was held in Los Angeles this year and I got to spend a couple of hours exploring the exhibits. There were, as should be expected, quite a lot of tablet and ereader related display technologies on display at this year’s exhibition.
Mirasol
Qualcomm provided its Mirasol booth with a number of demonstration units at SID. This included the demo unit shown in the photos below that was connected to a multimeter to demonstrate its low power consumption.
Most of the videos you see of the Mirasol display are showing off its ability to display color images. At SID Mirasol also had a demo running a video loop of an ebook reading app that I caught on video.
As you are no doubt aware by now, the Mirasol display technology was originally inspired by the iridescence in nature of such things as butterfly wings and the feathers of peacocks. There is in fact a bit of an iridescent quality that is noticeable in the display. This slight metallic sheen is much more apparent to me when the demos I’ve come across are showing pages of text rather than color pictures.
Based on the demonstration units I’ve seen, I’m thinking that Mirasol may not be quite as good for ereading as e-ink displays are, though it will be far easier on the eyes than a backlit LCD screen. Of course it is hard to form an opinion with only limited viewing time on demo displays running video clips. We will have to wait for an actual finished product to see for sure. The reps at the Mirasol booth were quite confident that tablets and/or ereaders with Mirasol displays will be on store shelves by the end of the year, so we shouldn’t have long to wait.
E Ink Holdings
E Ink Holdings had the higher resolution epaper announced a few weeks ago on display. These were just static displays and I could not see any page turns. This is basically a Pearl display with a higher resolution backplane, which results in almost twice the resolution of the standard Pearl display. It is very good for viewing schematics and intricate line drawings. The photo below shows the two prototypes E Ink had on display.
You may recall a few weeks ago there was another rumor concerning the much speculated about Amazon Kindle Tablet? According to this particular rumor Amazon has placed orders for tablets to be manufactured by Quanta Computer. These tablets are said to make use of the FFS LCD display from Hydis, 
which is a division of E Ink Holdings.
This beauty was on display at the E Ink booth as well. The Hydis display has very vivid colors and comes in a variety of sizes. To the right are a couple of shots of a 7-inch Hydis panel. The color banding is from my camera.
This display would indeed make for a gorgeous tablet.
Samsung
Before SID began Samsung announced a new tablet display, an ultra-high resolution 10.1-inch WQXGA PenTile RGBW screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600. This screen uses 40 percent less power than legacy RGB stripe LCD displays. Comparing this display with the Hydis above, the Hydis FFA LCD seems to have the lusher colors, while the PenTile provides an exceedingly sharp image.
Samsung also had a 10.1 inch WXGA MEMS display at SID. This is the world’s largest MEMS display. Not sure if it will be coming to a tablet anytime soon, but it was impressive.
The photo below shows the PenTile screen on the left and the MEMS on the right.
Samsung also had a few demos of the reflective electrowetting display technology that came with its acquisition of Liquavista. In addition to a demo of the color electrowetting display, Samsung also had a couple of black and white lower frequency displays that sip even less power for applications where color or video are not needed. Liquavista’s display technology has the potential to be very power efficient by combining intelligent power management with the ability to dynamically adjust the frame rate depending on the requirements of the content being shown.
When I asked the Samsung reps when we might see products shipping with their electrowetting displays they really didn’t seem to have any idea, but the consensus seemed to be sometime next year. Personally, I’ve always liked this color display. The colors are not as vibrant as some of the competition, but it looks more paper-like to me — kind of like an older comic book.
Ricoh Color ePaper
Okay, I didn’t get to see this one. Ricoh’s press release says that they
introduced the technology at SID, but I don’t think there were actually any prototypes on display — Ricoh didn’t have a booth at the exhibition.
At any rate, the display Ricoh is working on looks interesting, though it looks like it will be some time before the technology can be used in something like an ereading tablet. The company has been working on this since at least 2009, when it developed the world’s first new organic electrochromic material that is capable of producing the three primary colors cyan, magenta and yellow.
Ricoh says that it has achieved color displays in still images that are 2.5 times brighter and have four times the color reproduction range of other color epaper technologies. Some other features include lower manufacturing cost than competing forms of epaper; the capability to be used on flexible plastic substrates; it also sounds as if this will be a bistable display — does not use power except when refreshing the screen — and so will be very power efficient.
Something to hopefully see at next year’s CES. The picture is from Ricoh, and you can read more of the details of how Ricoh’s epaper works here.
Below is a short video I made that shows a few of the displays mentioned above. Please note that the rather bad color banding in the MEMS display is the fault of my video camera, which also does not do close-ups very well — the text in the Mirasol display really is much better than my video shows. Also, that is not me in the background complaining because the electrowetting display has no backlight 
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New Amazon tablet rumor no comments
Another day, another Amazon tablet rumor. Today’s buzz is somewhat more creditable-sounding — to me at least. DigiTimes is reporting that Quanta Computer, the largest ODM notebook manufacturer in the world, has received orders from Amazon for a tablet PC.
According to the report, Amazon’s tablet will feature an FFS LCD touchscreen from E Ink Holdings’ Hydis division. Like the IPS LCD display of the iPad, FFS (now usually known as AFFS — Advanced Fringe Field Switching) technology enables a wider field of view than a normal LCD. According to the Hydis website an AFFS LCD display is also capable of being readable outside in bright sunlight.
Digitimes sources report that Quanta is expected to start shipping the new tablet as soon as the second half of this year. The report goes on to say that E Ink has recently been trying to book up the production capacity of a Taiwanese small to medium size panel maker, which would add veracity to the story.
This could be just another rumor, but the fact that this type of LCD can at least be read out of doors does add some credibility, even though it is still a backlit display. From what I’ve seen I like Mirasol as a color display for the Kindle Tablet, but perhaps Amazon just does not feel it can afford to wait until Mirasol or another suitable non-backlit display can go into mass production.
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Amazon tablet incoming? no comments
Lately there has been a resurgence of speculation that an Amazon tablet is imminent. This has been fueled in part by the launch of the Amazon Appstore for Android and the ongoing job openings listed for Lab 126 that would seem to indicate that Amazon is working on an Android device.
While I have no doubt that an Amazon tablet is indeed in the works, I don’t see it happening soon. A tablet from Amazon will be not just another me-too Android tablet; it will be a Kindle Tablet. This means it will not only be capable of video playback, running apps and doing the other things we expect a tablet to do, it will also be optimized for ereading — which means something other than a backlit LCD display.
The most likely display candidate would seem to be Mirasol. According to various reports, some stemming from comments dropped by Qualcomm staff working on the Mirasol project, Mirasol-based products should have been on the market by now. Last year I very over optimistically wrote that I expected we would probably have a color Kindle in the first part of this year, in part based on these reports. Obviously that was a bad call.
The most recent news that feels real to me (and is backed up by another Qualcomm press release) was that a Mirasol production facility was finally going to be equipped for mass production in the final quarter of this year and would then finally start producing Mirasol displays in quantity in early 2012. This facility, which was originally announced in a Qualcomm press release almost two years ago, has apparently only been capable of producing sample quantities until this upgrade. Reliable production of a sufficient quantity of displays will be required to meet the demand a Kindle Tablet would engender, and Amazon would not be the only device maker standing in line for the new reflective displays.
So, barring any further delays, it looks to me now as if sometime in the first half of next year will be the soonest a Kindle tablet will be shipping, although it might be announced by the end of this year and even possibly available for pre-order during the holidays. I hope I am being very overly pessimistic this time — I would love to have an Amazon tablet in my hands as soon as possible.
By the way, here is an intriguing possibility for the Kindle Tablet: Currently in the Amazon Appstore for Android you can get not only the Kindle app but also ereading apps from Kobo and Wattpad. There is no Nookbook app, although B&N may just not have submitted one yet. I wouldn’t hold my breath though — not only are Amazon and Barnes & Noble arch-competitors who share no love (but have exchanged lawsuits); B&N would look bad if their app was included in the Appstore and they did not reciprocate by having other reading apps available for the Nook Color when more apps are made available for it.
But the point is, if an Amazon Kindle Tablet were released tomorrow it appears that users would be able to not only use it practically off the shelf to read ebooks from the Kindle Store; they would also be able to access ebooks from at least some of the other ebook sellers. This makes sense, as any Amazon tablet powered by Android would probably be quickly rooted and given access to the Android Market and the ereading apps to be had therein anyway.
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A Couple of Interesting Articles no comments
I’ve come across a couple of interesting articles today that are worth sharing.
Could a Kindle tablet running Windows 7 Mobile be in the works? Last week Microsoft and Amazon announced that the two companies had entered a cross-licensing deal allowing access to each other’s patent portfolios. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but payment of an undisclosed amount by Amazon to Microsoft was part of the deal.
There has been much speculation on the implications of this agreement. Patents related to the Kindle, which uses Linux, were included in the agreement. Was Amazon just trying to cover its bases vis-a-vis Microsoft’s contentions that many Linux implementations violate its patents? Or is Amazon laying the groundwork for a Kindle tablet to go head to head with the iPad? Does Microsoft plan to release an ereader, and is the Courier tablet for real?
On a ZDNet blog post Jason Perlow speculates that Amazon might have plans to ditch Linux and switch to a Windows 7 powered Kindle, possibly even with a Pixel Qi display:
Imagine a Windows 7 Phone Series device scaled up to a 10.1 inch screen, with Wireless-N networking, Microsoft’s Zune/Amazon MP3 music service, Kindle’s e-book store and the Microsoft’s developer base behind it. A synthesis of the world’s largest Internet retailer, ebook reseller and the world’s largest software company.
Such a device could also go well with Amazon’s video on demand service.
More Publishers vs Ebooks
Writing in the NY Times, Motoko Rich estimates the comparative costs of publishing a pbook vs an ebook and explains the ebook pricing controversy pretty much from the publisher’s point of view.
Citing concerns that ebooks will further pressure already beleaguered brick and mortar bookstores, Rich quotes Mike Shatzkin who is CEO of a consultant company to the publishing industry, “If you want bookstores to stay alive, then you want to slow down this movement to e-books. The simplest way to slow down e-books is not to make them too cheap.”
My thoughts would be that even if we didn’t have ebooks the bookstores would sadly still be in trouble. For one thing dedicated bookstores face similar problems as other smaller specialized shops have in recent history. How can they compete with the likes of Walmart, Costco or online stores such as Amazon? By the time that ebooks become a significant enough percentage of the total number of books sold to become a serious threat to bookstores it will most likely be far too late for many of these stores anyway.
In addition people read less than before because we are so busy and there are so many other forms of entertainment competing for our scarce leisure time. While it is of little benefit to pbook stores, ereaders have the capability to help reverse the decline in reading by making it much more convenient.
Rich also mentions the common publishing industry argument that “the industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.”
In other words bestsellers subsidize the rest of the books that are published. Well, if all books were published digitally this would not be an issue. No physical bookstore can afford the shelf space to stock all of those 70 percent of books that are not bestsellers. How can titles that are slow sellers even be bought if most bookstores cannot stock them? Online pbook stores can stock much more than brick and mortar stores, but there is still a limit.
Shelf space is not an issue for ebooks. The long tail made up of the 70 percent of titles that do not sell well would cost almost nothing to stock in digital format and because they could be made readily available as ebooks they would even sell more copies than they do now. Publishers could even turn their out of print books into a revenue stream by rereleasing them as ebooks.
Rich closes by quoting Anne Rice “The only thing I think is a mistake is people trying to hold back e-books or Kindle and trying to head off this revolution by building a dam. It’s not going to work.”
