Computerworld's Jeff Bertolucci, while reporting TechCrunch's look at a 'glowing' Kindle e-reader due someday in 2012, mentions again the possibility of a color e-Ink Kindle, since the theme of the story is that some kind of change will be coming sooner or later. This may be prompted by the theory that the Kindle Fire has caused many to choose the tablet rather than an e-reader and there is need for a new type of e-reader.
Bertolucci references his own story back in February (2/22/12), for PCWorld, about a report in the Chinese-Language Economic Daily News that E-Ink Holdings had received an order from Amazon, he writes this week, "to build millions of 6-inch color e-Readers" which were said, in February, to begin shipping in March (a month ago).
But on February 23, a day later, Nate Hoffelder at mediabistro's eBookNewser said:
' E-ink chairman Scott Liu also denied the recent rumors concerning a Kindle with a color E-ink screen; E-ink does not yet have that screen in production, so there is no way for them to ship it to Amazon. '
It remains possible that any color eInk might go into production sometime, but it seems it wouldn't be very soon if so.
Bertolucci probably did not see the reported denial on February 23, but since the color e-Ink orders-story was reported again two days ago on April 6, I thought I should mention it.
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From the various demos of Color e-ink they have done at trade shows, i would say that the technology is still a few years out. But the e-ink lighting solution looks pretty damn good and I do expect that to be in the next kindle refresh. The bigger question is when they will update the kindles. I personally expect that to be a ways out given how big an upgrade the last revision was.
ReplyDeleteI expect a price drop this xmas with the release of a bigger kindle fire.
Cameron, thanks for your thoughts on this.
DeleteLooks to be 10 months to a year away, if things go well. I personally don't want a glowing e-Ink type Kindle unless it's "on-demand" and switchable for dimmer lighting and night-time reading. Then it would be ideal. Don't know about this happening from a layer OVER the display though.
I also hope that besides a larger tablet that some want (and should be part of a family of tablets), they later have (for the people who miss the extras a lot) a Kindle Fire with an SD Slot (even if the iPad still doesn't have one built-in) and a camera for Skype at least. Amazon should know that the tablet would likely always be with the owner if they do that.