These are interesting times for E-Ink, the e-paper company. At the weekend E-Ink announced it was buying its rival Sipix, arguably giving E-Ink domination of the e-paper industry. On the other hand, E-Ink has just announced its financial results for Q2 2012, and the news is mixed: the company posted a Q2 loss of $23m, but consolidated revenue is up and the company is bullish about the rest of the year.
Some analysts believe that e-paper isn’t going to last, and that as the displays used on devices such as the iPad becomes easier to read for long periods of time, e-paper is going to die out. Others suggest that e-paper is still in its infancy and that its potential applications are only set to grow. The latter argument is boosted by developments such as a new flexible battery that could make e-Ink newspapers more user-friendly.
E-Ink sees multiple opportunities for growth. The company says that e-readers are set to become more popular in a number of big new markets such as Japan and Russia, and it looks likely that Amazon and Barnes & Noble will roll out new devices using E-Ink later this year. E-Ink is also set to diversify into sectors such as grocery store tagging. So the future might be brighter than the headline financial results suggest.
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