Rusnano managing director Georgy Kolpachev said,  “This investment signifies the potential that we see in the future of plastic electronics across a variety of commercial and consumer products.

“Flexible plastic electronic displays will provide another major milestone in how people process information. Entering this new disruptive segment at the stage of its inception gives Russia a chance to win a leading position in global market of future electronics.”

A plastic electronics fabrication facility will be built near Moscow that is expected to start production in two to three years.  Part of the money will also be used to pay off a $50 million loan left from Plastic Logic’s failed launch of the Que ereader in early 2010.  

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Let us hope that the price of any ereader incorporating this screen is lower than that of the cancelled Que ereader.

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Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies and Plastic Logic Inc. today announced they have entered into an agreement to create Plastic Logic’s second volume production facility for its next-generation plastic electronic displays and establish a plastic electronics industry in Russia. Under the terms of agreement RUSNANO intends to make a significant investment in the company, which is the global leader in the emerging field of plastic electronics, as part of a large-scale investment project.

Plastic Logic said it will continue to house its core R&D facility in Cambridge, England, as well as maintain its commercial factory in Dresden, Germany and corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California.

Plastic Logic has developed broad and deep intellectual property in plastic electronics. Plastic electronics technology has many economic, manufacturing, form factor and environmental benefits, and will ultimately replace traditional silicon semiconductor glass-based display products in a variety of devices in the future. Plastic Logic’s first application of the technology makes possible an amazingly thin, lightweight, robust and flexible active matrix display that is unmatched in the marketplace. The display is at the core of Plastic Logic’s first commercial consumer electronics product, a next-generation electronic reader for business that is currently under development.

“The production facility for the next generation of plastic displays will become the first step to establish the new branch of a electronics industry in Russia. By the time of the launch, the Russian facility will be the world’s most advanced fabrication plant in the plastic electronics industry,” said RUSNANO Managing Director Georgy Kolpachev.

Founded in 2000 by researchers from the Cambridge University Cavendish Laboratory in the UK, Plastic Logic opened its first high-volume, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany in 2008, where it will continue with production of the company’s first commercial product.

“RUSNANO’s investment will enable us to dramatically expand operations in support of volume production of our next-generation products, and to continue to advance our technology platform to deliver on our broader long-term vision,” said Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta.

“As a global company, we evaluated multiple countries for our expansion efforts and ultimately Russia offered the best strategic partnership opportunity,” added Plastic Logic’s CFO Rik Thorbecke. “Russia provides access to an enormous talent pool of scientists and engineers, and proximity to our European centers in Cambridge and Dresden. We have been very impressed with the caliber of the RUSNANO organization and, most importantly, its commitment to undertake the significant investment required to build a world-class volume production center capable of producing hundreds of thousands of units a month.”

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Plastic Logic today announced it is revising its product strategy and plans to shift its focus to bring to market a second-generation ProReader plastic electronics-based product. The company said it has cancelled its QUE product, which it debuted at CES in January 2010 and planned to ship earlier this year.

"We recognize the market has dramatically changed, and with the product delays we have experienced, it no longer make sense for us to move forward with our first generation electronic reading product," said Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta. "This was a hard decision, but is the best one for our company, our investors and our customers."

Archuleta indicates that Plastic Logic has not completely given up on plans to release an ereader at some point:

"We plan to take the necessary time needed to re-enter the market as we refocus, redesign and retool for our next generation ProReader product. We continue to perfect our core plastic electronic technology and manufacturing processes that are central to our product’s unique value proposition.

I reported yesterday that it looked as though Plastic Logic was in the process of being becoming part of Rusnano, a Russian state-owned nanotechnology corporation.  I would think that Rusnano is more interested in Plastic Logic’s plastic electronics technology than in making an ereader.  This technology has the potential to revolutionize electronics:

"We remain the industry’s leader in the development of plastic electronics technology for commercial purposes and are continuing to actively advance this technology in our labs and in our manufacturing facility."

Plastic electronics technology has many economic, manufacturing, form factor and environmental benefits, assuring that it will replace silicon in a variety of devices in the future. The technology makes possible an amazingly thin, lightweight, more robust mobile form factor that the QUE illustrated – and remains unmatched in the marketplace of traditional silicon semiconductor glass-based display products.

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While it is very doubtful that we will ever see the Que ereader released, Plastic Logic’s plastic chip technology could prove to be very important if further developed.

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This is just another delay according to Plastic Logic, but I would not get my hopes up.  In an iPad world with both the Kindle and nook priced below $200 it is hard to see where the $650 Que can fit in and sell enough units to be even close to profitable. 

The Que might have been a contender if released eight months ago, but it has just taken Plastic Logic too long to get their ereader finished and into consumer’s hands and the marketplace has passed them by.

(via eWeek)

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"My comments were taken out of context.  I was talking about partnerships we are working on, the value of Plastic Logic technology and its potential for the future–not a sale of the company. The company is not for sale.

Engadget reports that Plastic Logic expects to ship the Que ereader around June 24th according to an email sent by the company to a customer with a pre-order.

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The launch of Plastic Logic’s Que ereader has been delayed until the summer of 2010.

Update: Engadget reports that investor Hermann Hauser who was interviewed for the FT article has denied that Plastic Logic is for sale and that his comments were taken out of context.

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This, at least, is a much more professional way of handling a product delay then some companies have done – such as Irex for example.

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One problem though, is that many of the gadgets one sees and gets to hopefully try out are prototypes and are not always fully functional as well as being subject to change (or cancellation).  In some cases this seemed to be very true for ereaders this year.  Many of the ereader demos only had a few public domain titles loaded, and a few had dead batteries from all of the handling.

I managed to break my camera while at CES (Spirit Guide: fortunately grasshopper could fix it when he was back home & had access to his mini tools),  so some of the pics are taken with my cell phone – sorry!

Some of the booth designs are pretty amazing.  The cell phone picture at the top, which is of Samsung’s walls of flat panel screens does not do it justice. 

The picture at the left is of a large touch screen at Intel’s booth with 500 slowly spinning cubes, each of which represents a live website.  If you touch one of the cubes a small detail window opens for a few seconds.  All powered by a thumbnail-sized Intel chip.  Have we left Kansas yet Toto?

eReaders at CES 2010

Plastic Logic Que

Plastic Logic’s Que was probably one of the most eagerly anticipated ereaders at this year’s CES. 

The display is quite good; newspapers look good on the Que.  As you probably know by now,  the Que display utilizes plastic rather than glass to create a shatterproof screen.  Overall,  the Que felt a bit too plastic to me.  The bezel is a shiny acrylic or similar material, and  I expect it to be very scratch prone.  I think Plastic Logic would have done better to use a matte material. 

The announced price of the Que ereader is somewhat stratospheric;  $649 for a 4GB model with WiFi, and $799 for an 8GB model with both WiFi and 3G.  At these prices it will probably be in pretty direct competition with the Apple iSlate. 

Notion Ink Adam

Notion Ink’s Adam tablet is Android powered and is the first announced device  to use Pixel Qi display technology.  I really wanted to have a look at this,  but  the closest I could get was a non-powered demo in a glass case at the Nvidia booth.

According to an Nvidia booth-boy,  the only working unit at CES was in the hands of Notion Ink Director Rohan Shravan, who was booked up giving private demonstrations with it.  Liliputing.com was the happy recipient of one of these sessions and you can see their video and reviews.

Pixel Qi looks very promising.  Engadget said in a post yesterday that they have been told that a manufacturer that “everyone is familiar with” will be announcing a Pixel Qi equipped device in 2010.  Hmmm…wonder if the manufacturer alluded to has a name starting with the first letter of the alphabet and is named after a fruit or a river?

Irex

Also at the Nvidia booth was an unpowered (or maybe just the batteries were dead) Irex DR800SG ereader.  I couldn’t do much with it as it had no power,  but I still think that the design has promise;  an 8-inch screen in a package that is the same overall size as a Kindle with 6-inch screen. 

Still no idea when this will be released.  There were some rumors of a mid-January release,  but Irex seems to have a history of setting release dates that don’t materialize.  There is still nothing on Best Buy’s website about the DR800SG.

Liquavista

Liquavista is one of the color display technologies that should be making its way into future ereaders.  Liquavista is based on existing LCD manufacturing infrastructure.  This display tech is capable of displaying color video while using very low power.  It looks as though it won’t be integrated into an actual ereader that you can buy until possibly the end of 2010 or more likely early next year.  Qualcomm has said that its Mirasol color display technology is on track to enter production in the fall of 2010, so it may be able to beat Liquavista to market by a few months,  but of course we will have to wait and see.

The colors and video playback in the Liquavista reference designs displayed at CES were quite impressive.   The display does look very paper-like.

iRiver Story

The Story ereader by iRiver has been selling in Asia and Europe,  and is supposed to make it to the US this month. 

iRiver is a Korean company best known for its portable music and video players.  The Story is iRiver’s first foray into ereaders. 

The Story has a chiclet style keyboard similar to the Kindle ereader.  The display is a 6-inch e-ink screen.  There is 2GB of internal memory plus an SD card slot.  There should be an MS Office doc viewer as well as some sort of comics viewer.  Adobe Digital Editions as well as non-DRM’ed epub should be among the supported file formats.

The Story ereader seemed to be solidly built,  but other than the features noted above,  there wasn’t anything that seemed to really differentiate it from the other ereaders out there.  Refresh times and navigation seemed to be pretty much on par with other current ereaders.  The price and availability has not been announced yet,  but the Story was selling for about $290 in Korea.  I don’t see this ereader being really competitive unless it is priced less than the Kindle or nook.

Dual-Screen “eReaders”

Both MSI and Asus have their dual LCD screened ereader concepts on display at CES,  but these really seem like netbooks with two screens rather than ereaders.  Perhaps if the screens were to use Pixel Qi they would be more viable as ereaders.  As laptop/netbooks, however, both could be quite good.  The two screens can work separately or together as one larger screen, or one screen can serve up a virtual keyboard.

enTourage eDGe

After Plastic Logic’s booth the enTourage Systems booth was probably the busiest ereader show at CES. 

The Kindle Chronicles has a good CES interview and video of the eDGe in action.

My take is that while the eDGe with all of its study tools and bells and whistles would be good for students and their etextbooks or perhaps as a netbook replacement,  it is obviously overkill for someone looking for just an ereader.  It is rather bulky for reading in your bed or armchair.   Also it appears that the eDGe ereader will be tied to enTourage’s ebook store for DRM’ed ebooks.  Currently enTourage claims to have 200,000 ebooks in addition to the usual Google public domain suspects. 

At a price of almost $500 the eDGe is more expensive than most netbooks as well.  Still, it is the most interesting multipurpose “ereader” that I’ve seen yet.  A lot of thought obviously went into its development,  and the eDGe is capable of doing just about anything you would ask of it.

Possibly Related Posts:

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