A little over a year ago we wrote about electronic paper (e-paper) and some of the companies who were looking to make it into the next big thing in technology. So far things have been slower than we had thought with products like Sony’s PRS-5-5 e-book reader yet to achieve the cult status of Apple’s iPod. However, things have moved on for UK company Plastic Logic (PL) who are one of the leaders in flexible ‘read anywhere’ active matrix displays.

Initially spun out of Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratories in 2000, PL are now building a £50m fabrication plant in Germany and will start manufacturing in early 2008. Whether you call this technology e-paper or the devices e-readers or e-books, this looks to become a huge market with IDTechEx predicting the market will be worth £15bn by 2015 and as much as £225bn by 2025. In practical terms, this translates to an expected demand of 42m units by 2010, of which PL’s new facility will be able to immediately supply 1m, with production capacity expected to grow rapidly.

Funding for this new venture came from Oak Investment Partners, Intel, Tudor Investment Corporation, BASF Venture Capital, Bank of America and Amadeus Capital.

While much of the focus in this market is on consumer devices for displaying books and magazines, most pundits agree that education is likely to be one of the early adopter markets for this technology.

While technology like e-paper is exciting, one of the main barriers in developing this market has getting publishers to supply content. This is where Sony has been working hard with its CONNECT e-books store. This now offers over 20,000 titles from publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Holtzbrink, Taylor & Francis, Grove, Penguin and Harper Collins.

www.ebooks.connect.com
www.idtecex.com
www.plasticlogic.com