| My thought: market segmentation, and/or the inability to do so meaningfully. The principle characteristics of e-ink displays are size, resolution, refresh rate, and colour gamut. (Even B&W displays have a range of greyscale gamuts.) Small displays are now reasonably cheap, with displays of ~6--8" available for $20--50. Larger displays, suitable for advertising, marketing, or other commercial/industrial applications are much more expensive, as noted here. Some of that is likely cost-driven, but another element is that if a larger supply were offered, the price would fall. Absent some way of bracketing specific applications, there's little to keep, say, advertising or commercial users from making do with cheaper consumer-grade displays. There's a somewhat similar rationale that was arrived at in the 19th century by French engineer / economist / polymath Jules Dupuit, in describing the rationale by which 3rd class rail carriages were so much poorly fitted than 2nd class --- if the 3rd class accommodations were merely sufficient then they would cannibalise 2nd class ticket sales. Instead, 3rd class was made intentionally bad. That's a dynamic which is replicated today in both transporation (e.g., airline coach class seating) and free-tier Internet and information services. I don't know that this is what's driving EInk's business strategy. But I have my suspicions. |