Amazon to release colour e-ink readers this year?

by Alistair Lowe on 20 February 2012, 11:03

Tags: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

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It's proving to be an interesting few weeks, with MWC just around the corner, we're already receiving leaky details of various devices and last weekend was no different, with strong hints and suggestions that Amazon is both looking to move into colour e-ink and production of a 10 inch Kindle Fire tablet device, this year.

The first rumour came in the form of a report from Chinese, Economic Daily News, which states that E Ink Holdings, has reportedly landed orders for 6 inch colour e-book reader modules from Amazon, with shipments to begin in March and ramp up to three million units a month, strongly hinting at a Q3/Q4 release of a colour e-ink Kindle, should the report prove true.

Given that the firm supplies Amazon's current E-Ink Pearl displays and has now had time to perfect production of its E-Ink Triton colour panels, this report certainly doesn't feel far fetched and we may soon see Kindles capable of displaying 4,096 different colours, on top of the current 16 shade grey-scale offering, as can be found in Ectaco's jetBook e-reader.

On another note, reports have come through that Foxcon Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), has obtained orders for 10 inch Kindle Fire tablets and will begin shipments in Q2, again hinting towards a Q3 release. With reports that Amazon will be ramping down shipments of the Kindle Fire this quarter, this report backs suggestions from November last year that a 10 inch and possibly, 8.9 inch Kindle Fire will be heading our way, though, when I say our way, for all we know this release may also be just for the US.

HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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Posted by crossy - Mon 20 Feb 2012 11:11
Not bothered for the Kindle Fire (not happy with it's not-quite-Android-ness), but a colour Kindle does appeal a lot - especially if it's not a silly price. If they can do the colour one for, say, less than £150 then I'd probably buy one.

Be ideal to stick all those manuals etc that I've currently got. Even better if they can do a deal with Zinio so I could get eBook magazine subscriptions sent to it.
Posted by Scribe - Mon 20 Feb 2012 11:26
crossy
Not bothered for the Kindle Fire (not happy with it's not-quite-Android-ness), but a colour Kindle does appeal a lot - especially if it's not a silly price. If they can do the colour one for, say, less than £150 then I'd probably buy one.

Be ideal to stick all those manuals etc that I've currently got. Even better if they can do a deal with Zinio so I could get eBook magazine subscriptions sent to it.

Ditto on preferring the colour e-ink. Would be nice to see them slap in a Cortex-A9 or even a single core A15, colour screen would be great but it would really come into its own with a CPU fast enough to handle responsive web-browsing.
Posted by tickleonthetum - Mon 20 Feb 2012 12:08
This would be great as we don't like the current Kindle's display. Also it means it would finally make sense to buy colour illustrated books for a Kindle!

Damn! Just saw a video of the tech. and it still does that Migraine inducing flicker when turning pages! They seriously need to sort that out for the next generation of readers!
Posted by Hicks12 - Mon 20 Feb 2012 13:37
that flickering wont be fixed for along time if ever, the reason e ink is extremely good in terms of power usage and readability is that it refreshes once, once the image is printed on the display it stays there till overwritten, an example is that the kindle arrives with a screen saying to charge before its even been switched on, as it uses 0 power once set, easy to say low bat charge :).

Refreshing i found to be a non issue, its extremely quick and its less annoying that turning a page… must just be me :D
Posted by crossy - Mon 20 Feb 2012 14:07
tickleonthetum
Damn! Just saw a video of the tech. and it still does that Migraine inducing flicker when turning pages! They seriously need to sort that out for the next generation of readers!
Same here - trying to use one of the older Kindles and after five minutes I started to feel “sea sick” - which was an achievement because I don't suffer from mal de mare.

That said, I was looking at my daughter's Kindle4 and the screen on that looks subtly different to the one I used before - the “pouring data down the screen” effect is a lot less pronounced. So I've got my fingers crossed that the next generation screens - which I'm guessing this colour screen would be - should be even better.

Killer use for the colour Kindle for me is definitely magazines - I'm guessing that the reason that there aren't more available presently is the limitations of the current monochrome screens. Like I said, I really hope that there's a way to get content that currently comes via Zinio.

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