The development of e ink screen
1 Preliminary Exploratory period (1998-2009)
Following the establishment of E-Ink company in 1997, in May 1999, the company launched Immedia, an electronic paper for outdoor advertising in the United States, which is mainly used for reading text messages in places such as banks, stores, booths, and stages. In 2001, E-Ink, ToppanPrinting, Philips and SONY jointly developed the world's first e-ink screen reader, the LIBRIe e-book, which was officially launched in April 2004. Code SonyLibrie1000 - EP. The Kindle e-book reader, known to the public as Amazon, was launched on November 19, 2007. It has a 6-inch screen, can connect to 3G network, has 250MB storage space, and can download 88,000 e-books, which is more than four times the LIBRIe library of SONY's similar product at that time. It is worth mentioning that the launch of Amazon's Kindle and iPhone was listed as one of the world's top ten Internet technology events in 2007. In 2009, the cumulative sales volume of Amazon Kindle e-book reader reached 3 million units worldwide, and the sales volume of domestic e-book reader reached 693,000 units, with a year-on-year growth of 121% and a market revenue growth of 265%, making amazon one of the fastest growing electronic products. Amazon sold more e-books than paper books for the first time. However, we have also seen the development of e-book readers hit a bottleneck, not the production of hardware, but the content of e-books is not rich enough, readers need to be equipped with qualified copyright and continuous and stable content update.
2. Rapid Development Period (2010 -- 2013)
Early e-ink screen technology of e-book readers using the operating system is basically Linux or WindowsCE system, poor user experience, especially the lack of customization of reading software. With the popularity of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android smartphone, apple's iOS and Google's Android's vast array of apps are changing the way people use digital devices and upgrading e-book readers. At the end of 2009, Barnes&Noble launched the Nook, the first android e-reader, using GoogleAnroid1.5cupcake, which can be installed with a separate APP. Yotaphone, the world's first e-ink screen mobile phone, was officially released by Yotadevices in Russia at the end of 2013. The second generation product YotaPhone2, which was launched in 2014, is well known for its dual-screen display. The rear screen uses a 4.7-inch qHD e-paper ink screen and can be switched intelligently. In the rapid development of digital reading, electronic ink screen technology of e-book readers into the public life. Compared with traditional paper books, the radiation-free, backlit, healthy and comfortable reading experience is closer to the traditional reading habits of human beings. The boom in e-book readers has also led to a rise in e-book reading rates.
3. Development and Maturity period (2014 to present)
After more than ten years of development, the research on digital reading has entered a mature stage, with the rapid growth of literature storage. At this stage, more and more people begin to pay attention to national reading, social reading and reading promotion, and the user experience is also the focus of attention. Thanks to the progress of big data, cloud computing, blockchain, intelligent terminal and network communication technologies, Chinese people's reading life has brought great changes, and digital reading has gradually become the main way of reading. In 2017, E-Ink full-color electronic paper ACeP made its debut in Asia. It can achieve a complete color gamue of 4096 colors, which perfectly presents the three-dimensional feeling of pictures like poster printing. The year 2020 can be said to be the first year of color E-ink screen in a real sense. E-book readers and mobile phones equipped with color E-ink screen have mushroomed, such as iFLYTEDKEBOOK of IFLYTEK, iReaderC6 of IReader, And BOOXpoke2color of Artesian. In addition to the color e-ink screen display, the hardware configuration is excellent, equipped with Android high version open system, and the high-quality copyright cooperation with the legitimate book store, and even enjoy AI intelligent anchor technology, voice synthesis, text reading and other features.
4 summarizes
Through the analysis of the digital reading stage of development, we can see that using electronic ink display technology of e-book reader reflected the trend of the development of the digital reading industry hardware, but its competitive advantage lies in not only advanced hardware equipment, but constantly build reading ecology, enriching the content of e-books and software applications, strengthen the reading experience is the commanding heights of the industry. The production process of e-ink is also complicated. The grinding of e-ink requires professional zirconia beads, and zirconia beads of Sanxin New Material can be used for grinding and manufacturing e-ink. In the future, e-ink screen technology is not only used in digital reading, but also widely used in intelligent transportation, retail, logistics, education, medical care, smart city and other fields. It promotes the sustainable development of digital stationery and has deep potential in the field of virtual reality, exploring new application scenarios.
