Color e-paper has lastly hit its stride. After years of smaller firms adopting this expertise in e-readers and e-notebooks, Rakuten Kobo was essentially the most outstanding model to go all in earlier this 12 months. Will Amazon and Barnes and Noble lastly undertake color e-paper in 2025? Is the way forward for digital studying color e-paper?
It was a novelty when the unique Amazon Kindle got here out in 2007. No person might anticipate this handheld studying gadget to disrupt your complete conventional publishing trade. Inside just a few years, Barnes and Noble, Rakuten Kobo, and different gamers entered the sector. Within the first ten years, e-readers primarily used black-and-white e-paper shows. A couple of outliers experimented with color e-paper, however adoption was poor, and gross sales have been abysmal.
In 2024, just a few gamers have used color e-paper for a number of years. Pocketbook is without doubt one of the most well-known, together with Onyx Boox. Moreover, smaller regional gamers, based totally in China and Taiwan, cater completely to these markets. Conventional information media and on-line tech blogs by no means paid consideration to color e-papers till Rakuten Kobo launched the Kobo Clara Color and Kobo Libra Color. The reception for these new Kobo gadgets has been nice. Nonetheless, the corporate acknowledged there may be room of their portfolio for each black and white e-paper and color for the foreseeable future.
Will Amazon launch a color Kindle? Ming-Chi Kuo of Tianfeng Worldwide Securities acknowledged that at the least two new color Kindle gadgets will launch in 2025. He predicts that new e-readers will likely be between 7 and 10 inches and won’t function the Kaleido 3 shows utilized in many of the newest color e-readers. As an alternative, they’ll use Superior Shade ePaper (ACeP) expertise from E Ink.
Barnes and Noble’s plans are unclear. They’ve persistently launched black-and-white e-readers and haven’t disclosed their plans. If Amazon have been to launch a color Kindle, they might doubtless comply with go well with since Amazon is their most important competitor in the US.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Put up and the New York Occasions have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
