The future of e-readers Part 1: The technology bottleneck

The average editor will follow the news about emerging electronic displays with amazement: the promises are mind-boggling, yet the practices so far rather poor. Will e-readers really be the saviours of the trade and if so, how come it is taking so long before a standard solution comes to market? To a large extent, the answer lies in the craving for effective breakthroughs of a beleaguered industry, much more than in the technology itself. Producing the versatile, flexible, crystal clear electronic reading pane is a formidable technological challenge. Several hardware producers are achieving promising results, but what they have launched up until now are at best pilot devices to test the principles and explore the market. However, the learning curve is steep and in a few years time the assessment will be much more positive.

It is difficult to foresee which technology will become the default application. A strong position is held by e-ink mounted devices that companies like Sony, PlasticLogic, iRex and content provider Amazon have embraced. Their e-readers progress from one version to another, often within a matter of months, with relevant but not revolutionary improvements. They boast splendid daylight readability and prolonged battery life, but remain black-and-white, static (no streaming) and cannot impress with their interfaces.

And the competition is gearing up from two sides. On the one hand even more advanced technologies are presently being lab-tested, such as electro-wetting (using thin liquid layers which can be manipulated with an electric charge) and OLED (using clusters of organic, light emitting diodes). These promise even more advantages - full colour, video, and foldability - surpassing the crucial black-and-white limitation that disadvantages publishers today. On the other hand, there is the revival of the 'classical' flatscreen LCD display, built into a new generation of mini-pc's (or ultra mobile PC's - UMPCs). These slim, lightweight, powerful and cheap devices finally close the gap between the PDA and the bulky laptop with a medium size, versatile handbag PC, ideal for people on the move. Frontrunner ASUS hit the mother load with its EEE series, and meanwhile has many followers in the competitive hardware sector.

The final verdict is as always in the hands of the consumer. Which tool will become the preferred 'universal mobile reading device'? First of all, size, price and nice determine the choice. Whichever technology is built in, the device must gently fit in everybody's travel outfit, be not too expensive and have a certain show-off value. Second, features are key. Connectivity, ease of navigation, customisation options - the mobile reader demands instant performance. And for the moment, easy access to an array of content also plays an important role: Amazon plays that card very cleverly.

At this point, the UMPC seems to have the advantage, with the e-ink based e-readers left behind being too limited and too expensive. Some manufacturers work in the direction of low cost hybrid solutions. The OLPC consortium (which stands for One Laptop Per Child) for instance has announced the XO-2 for early 2010, with a dual-mode display featuring a technology to 'freeze' the LCD screen to maximise readability in full sunlight, so far the most important e-ink selling point.

Besides the choice of hardware, software standardisation will determine how we will be reading our future electronic newspapers. In these early e-reader days, many players try to lock-in their customers in proprietary solutions: Amazon connecting the Kindle to its own portal, iRex with its distribution platform, operators like Orange and Telecom Italia with dedicated hard ware and software: a seemingly attractive business model in the short term, but a serious handicap for widespread adoption of the technology. A major step forward is the introduction of the epub format, adopted by a growing number of larger publishers that could become a de facto standard allowing various content sources to be read, customised and transferred across e-readers from most manufacturers. Anything goes on any e-device: we move in that direction, and newspapers should have their offerings ready for it.

Director of the Euorpean Centre for Digital Communications and long-time journalist, Jan Bierhoff is currently conducting studies on e-reader technology and the consumer trends that will define their use.