Story by
Robin Wauters
Robin Wauters is the European Editor of The Next Web. He describes himself as a hopeless cyberflâneur, a lover of startups, his family a Robin Wauters is the European Editor of The Next Web. He describes himself as a hopeless cyberflâneur, a lover of startups, his family and Belgian beer. If you'd like to know more about Robin, head on over to robinwauters.com or follow him on Twitter.
Anyone who’s ever read an electronic book on an Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader or Barnes & Noble NOOK has seen the marvelous technology from Taiwan-US company E Ink Corporation from up close.
At this week’s Media Evolution conference in Malmö, Sweden, I had the pleasure to meet and talk at length with E Ink executive Sriram Peruvemba, who heads the growing ePaper production company’s marketing division among other things.
Started as a spin-off from MIT’s Media Lab, E Ink was acquired by Taiwanese display maker Prime View International in 2009, with Peruvemba coincidentally playing a key role in the deal-making process. After the transaction was completed, Prime View actually changed its name to E Ink Holdings.
Peruvemba says he never travels without a bunch of stuff that incorporates E Ink products, so I got a demo of the relatively new NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight (quite nifty, that), a cool watch, an e-book reader made entirely out of plastic, a smart bank card that lets users generate a passcode simply by pressing an area on the card (which then gets displayed on the card) and more.
The affable E Ink exec also shared more about E Ink’s upcoming products and innovations: better color displays, larger displays to cater to the signage market, displays with faster page-turn and response times, flexible displays and whatnot.
In related news, E Ink recently announced that it intends to eventually own 100 percent of the shares of SiPix, a maker of electronic paper displays that should help E Ink break into new markets and diversify into newer applications (and bring valuable patents and intellectual property into the fold).
Finally, Peruvemba talks about E Ink’s business, if you’re interested in that as well.
Enjoy the video interview, and my apologies for the poor lighting:
Image Credit: kodomut via Flickr
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