Taiwanese manufacturer AUO projects that sales of e-book and car displays will cross-over in 2011
It was mostly all about e-books this afternoon at the DisplaySearch Emerging Display Technologies conference in San Jose, Calif.
First with a presentation by C.T. Liu, the vice-president and general manager of AUO‘s consumer division – Taiwan’s largest flat-panel maker - who expects e-book display shipments to reach 3.6 million units this year, totaling $271 million. In 2012, shipments of over 18 million units will generate over $1.1 billion.
e-book readers to reach 77 million units in 9-years; touchscreen, colour in the horizon
Then, DisplaySearch analyst Jennifer Colegrove grew even more optimistic and estimated that the e-paper display market for e-books and e-textbooks (5 to 10 inches in size) will grow from 4 million units this year to 77 million in 2018, totaling $3.8 billion in revenues!
A huge growth, unless of course – as rumoured – Apple unveils one next week!
Finally, E Ink vice-president of marketing Sriram Peruvemba expects that by the end of year the number of e-books (small 5″ displays to 6″ to 8″ and sometimes 9″ for specific applications) will exceed 50, from about 25 different manufacturers.
Interestingly, Peruvemba believes that e-Textbooks will be the killer application for e-Paper/e-Book readers.
“On average, college students spend $650 per year on textbooks, which would pay for the device,” says the E Ink executive.
Peruvemba also showed a sleek 5″ e-book that fits in his jacket’s inside pocket. A colour version from E Ink is due by the end of 2010. Today, Fujitsu’s $1,000 Flepia is the only colour e-book reader on the market.
Follows a short video clip of the 3 presentations:
TechPulse 360
Mark Boslet