E-books: The flexible future
Interesting news from the DemoFall conference held this week in San Diego:
Plastic Logic--a company founded to commercialize electronics built on flexible plastic substrates--demonstrated a prototype e-book reader (not yet named) and announced that it plans to ship this product in the first half of next year. You can read the press release for yourself.
This particular gizmo is very attractive. It uses a large, flexible electronic paper display based on technology from E Ink (the same company that makes the displays for Amazon.com's Kindle and Sony's Reader), but the device overall is remarkably thin and light.
And the whole thing is somewhat flexible, so it won't break if it gets slightly bent in a backpack or briefcase. Flexible doesn't mean invulnerable, but it's a lot better than the brittle glass displays of existing e-book readers.
Check out this video from DEMOfall, in which Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta demonstrates the prototype. I see some minor problems in the prototype's display--some dead lines and odd drawing glitches--but nothing that should interfere with the scheduled launch.
More importantly, even as a prototype, the display's contrast ratio seems to be better than that of the Kindle or Reader, mostly by virtue of the white being whiter--I'd have to make a direct comparison to be sure, though. I also see all of the critical features I want in an e-book reader: good display resolution, reasonable performance, and a touch-sensitive screen to support document markup and an on-screen keyboard. The Kindle's keyboard just isn't good enough.
In fact, the prototype appears to have only a few physical controls; essentially all of the user interaction takes place through the touch screen. It's just a smooth white rectangle, like a thin pad of writing paper: about 8.5 inches by 11 inches by 0.3 inches, with a 10.7-inch screen and a total weight less than a pound.
Pricing is said to be "competitive," and battery life is described as "days"; we'll have to see what happens to these estimates by the time the product ships. The Kindle has "days" of battery life, but sometimes, it's just a few days, and I have been occasionally disappointed to find mine dead when I wanted to use it.
At DemoFall, Plastic Logic spun the gizmo as a "business reader," which may be an attempt to justify a premium price for the large display and superior physical robustness, but I think that it has more potential as a consumer product. Business users have laptops already. Plastic Logic may find ways to position its reader as a complement to the laptop--I can think of a few ways myself--but the consumer market opportunity is far larger.
Other bloggers have overreacted somewhat by predicting that the Plastic Logic reader will kill the Kindle, but that isn't going to happen. There's more to providing a good e-book experience than industrial design. The Kindle is very well supported by Amazon, and it has that unique free-forever wireless-data link. But if Plastic Logic can find a partner with ties to the publishing industry and solve the wireless problem, the result would be a serious challenge to Amazon.
I suspect that it's no coincidence that Plastic Logic is talking about bringing its gizmo to market "through partners around the world." Could this be how Barnes & Noble will take on the Kindle? I wouldn't be surprised.
Overall, I think that this is the first of the third-generation e-book readers: as far beyond the Kindle and Sony's Reader as those devices were advanced over first-gen products such as the Rocket eBook and Franklin eBookMan.
I'm hoping to talk with the folks at Plastic Logic about this gizmo and its other product and technology plans. I'll be back with an update, once I do.
Peter N. Glaskowsky is a computer architect in Silicon Valley and a technology analyst for the Envisioneering Group. He has designed chip- and board-level products in the defense and computer industries, managed design teams, and served as editor in chief of the industry newsletter "Microprocessor Report." He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
Also, then the reader will have to always lay on it's screen to catch light,since on the edges there's too little space to put enough solar panels to power the display.
The edges probably will be smaller in future versions, making it look more professional.
It is a professional reader, and although no prices have been announced, we can look at the market and estimate this reader to make an entrance of around $800,and probably dropping to $500 in the first 1/2 to 1 year.
With a solar panel on the back you'll be paying easily $250-300 more; the reader will become more heavy,less flexible (since solar panels are made out of silicon (glass)),and will be stained much quicker by greasy fingerprints.
Until they find a way to make flexible solar panels based on plastics, the chance of this being incorporated in the plastic logics reader is very small.
Those are my thoughts on the topic.
For most portable electronics, there's just not enough area or light available to matter. In peak sunlight, a good solar cell can draw maybe 10 mW from each square centimeter. The back of a reader like this could have 20 x 30 cm of solar cells, which adds up to 6 W or so-- way more than you'd need. But... under ordinary conditions, you'd get much less. Indoors, you'd get maybe 1% to 0.1% of that peak figure-- 6 mW to as little as 0.6 mW.
Plus, solar cells add weight and significant cost, and designing the product to survive long periods of exposure to direct sunlight is also difficult and expensive. For almost all users, it's just plain better to put in a little bigger battery, or spend a little more to reduce the size of the AC adapter or reduce the unit's basic power consumption (lower-power design really does cost more).
Now, if there was a market for ebook readers for campers, maybe it would make sense to add a solar cell, especially if there was a power _output_ so the device could recharge other gizmos. But ordinarily, this isn't a good idea.
Oh, I should add that the reason solar-powered watches and calculators make sense is that they generally consume only microwatts of power (due to ultra low-frequency operation, subthreshold switching, etc.), so even with a small solar cell and indoor light, they work just fine.
Getting back to this nice bit of vaporware, the real natural market for this gizmo is academia.
Especially the university market; a robust PDF/PPT viewer with annotation capabilities would be a natural for classrooms and as long as the "days" of battery power add up to at least 24 hours students can recharge it daily with little issue.
As to pricing, "competitive" for this product isn't kindlw; its most likely iRex and its kin. And that means pricing in the $700-800 range which is perfectly fine for an academic environment (amortized over 8-10+ semesters of textbook buying its quite reasonable) but unacceptable for consumer reading.
Anybody who thinks a product like this is going to be introduced at Kindle prices for consumer reading is way out of touch with reality; that market in way too small for that price point. At least until the publisher clean up their act on pricing.
For business I agree. They have laptops for that price, which they can connect to a beamer in case they would want to do a meeting.
Business is a name for probably those businesses that have directors that are gadget freaks and want to impress their employees by giving a lecture using the device once,after which it will be laying in the closet for several months...
It looks like it is intention is to replace paper in the office. Being a e-book reader is a secondary, if not ancillary, result of accomplishing this task.
Just think of how many print outs are done in the office.
If I was to bet who is plastronics partner, I would say Xerox. For contracts, this is awsome. Also, think of document that self destructs??? as to not leave a trail that a competitor or espionage can get a hold of?
Easily, this kind device, I would think the price tag for such a device would be around $1k to $2k.
Best,
JD
- by kwnewton March 10, 2009 6:47 AM PDT
- I agree with jackdaniels472 that this is NOT an ebook reader. It is made to fit in a briefcase, whereas my Kindle fits in my purse. However, if eReaders are like PCs, business will drive the market. If you recall, it wasn't word processing that kicked off the PC as a huge product, it was the spreadsheet.
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(8 Comments)That said, the PL technology is bound to have an impact on devices like the Kindle and the Sony eReader. Assuming PL is planning a smaller, "recreational size" at some future date, Amazon and Sony will have to look into fundamental design and manufacturing changes to compete. IEEE had an article about PL, too: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb09/7929
it's a brave new world out there!