From what I read, the way eInk conducts their business, it is very difficult to launch new eInk products. This limits the available offerings which means there is no competition to drive the market priced down. I bought a reMarkable 2 because it seems to be perhaps the only device on the market which doesn't require a jailbreak or such to do even the most basic customizations. The only other alternative I have seen so far are DIY projects attaching a raw eInk screen to a Rapberry Pi.
> From what I read, the way eInk conducts their business, it is very difficult to launch new eInk products.
I have not read such claims. What I have read are individual small-scale customers approaching base layer producers like E-Ink and being disappointed after expecting assistance in getting their product ideas to market. That's analogous to a 10,000 unit/month or less customer approaching say a liquid crystal supplier, or AU Optronics and expecting any form of support or assistance. The outcome of such an interaction is pretty much guaranteed. Even the top tier distributors won't talk to you unless you're expected to order at least 100,000 units a year. Anything less and you go through the normal OEM development path of which there's tonnes of partners. You do what everybody else who has a display product idea does, which is go to SID or maybe just CES, and talk to OEM vendors. If you've got an E-Ink product idea, probably somebody like Netronix would be your OEM partner but even they probably won't talk to you unless you're putting down big NRE. That's just how it is. Volume drives the products. You can't have small volume and cheap unless you're reusing some component that someone else has driven the volume for. That's just as true in the display industry as it is in any other tech industry, eg: LCDs, OLEDs, CPUs, memory, sensors, even passives like resistors and capacitors!
Thank you for your comment. I updated the article and did a strikethrough in the sentence about e-ink and patents, 'Correction, this is an unsubstantiated claim.'
This sounds like a chicken or egg argument. Of course you'll give me wholesale pricing on volume in any market. But are product creators scared off when a big part of each unit's cost will go to license the screen technology?
I don't follow. I also don't see how it is different than any other industry be it bricks or CPUs. Buy a few and the per unit price is high. Buy millions and the per unit price is low.
> Of course you'll give me wholesale pricing on volume in any market.
Yes.
> But are product creators scared off when a big part of each unit's cost will go to license the screen technology?
I don't know what you're asking. What does "license e-ink technology" mean specifically? It would be equivalent to asking how much does it cost to license Microsoft technology or Google technology? I hope you can see how the question is unanswerable.
