한국
中国
The past number of months has resulted in an amazing array of new business ventures, manufacture ramping and capacity expansion for mirasol® displays and QMT. I’ve personally been involved in all of these, which should help explain my relative absence from blogging. I am excited now, however, to share with you some thoughts on our just-announced partnership with XinHua eStore that will result in the first mirasol display-enabled multimedia e-reader.
For those of you who have not read the ‘official announcement’, let me quickly summarize: This morning in Shanghai at the 2011 China Flat Panel Display Conference we announced our collaboration with XinHua eStore to imminently launch an e-reader under their e-reader technology brand of Yeahmore. Out of this relationship will come the first of a number of product integrations of color mirasol displays into multimedia-enabled e-readers. The Yeahmore device will have access to content ranging from mainstream to educational to newspapers and periodicals. We expect the product to hit the shelves in the 2nd quarter of 2011. As you would expect from a device with a mirasol display, it will support color content, video-rate refresh times and up to three times the usage time of a similarly equipped LCD- enabled e-reader.
Three key facts I want you to know about this relationship:
First, let me explain a bit about who XinHua eStore is for those not familiar with the China market. XinHua eStore is a joint venture of China’s largest bookseller and exclusive educational content distributor XinHua Media, JieFang Daily (China’s leading newspaper organization), and EDO Technologies. XinHua Media has over 3,000 brick and mortar bookstores throughout China and the intent is to have every store outfitted with an XinHua eStore outlet within the coming years.
Second, we all know that content is a key differentiator for e-readers. With their media, news, periodical and educational content, we believe XinHua eStore is as well positioned in content as they are in distribution via the XinHua bookstores throughout China. Further, we are excited to be commercializing in the China market which is forecasted to be the world’s largest for e-readers by 2015 (Display Research).
Finally, I want to talk about this “multimedia e-reader” term we’re using. We think this device, and the class of devices to follow, offer a very unique series of benefits that are not only unavailable in any other display technology, but more importantly, live up to the promise of our display technology. Users of the YeahMore device will benefit from mirasol display technology’s combination of outdoor visibility, long usage time (up to 10 days of e-reading), color and video capabilities, all while using a touch screen interface. Many are already asking, so here’s a sneak peak at the device we are working on with YeahMore:
We have achieved significant milestones in the past year, from manufacturing to forging new relationships with device manufacturers and content providers. In January 2011 Qualcomm announced a commitment to investing $975 million in a new mirasol displays fabrication facility in Taiwan, and I have been steering our efforts open its doors in 2012. The partnership with YeahMore is an exciting first step, and this announcement is one of many more for the commercial ramp up for the XGA color mirasol display products coming this year. As Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs recently discussed during the 2011 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, mirasol displays have the power to be a real game changer across the entire wireless ecosystem.
That’s it for me, but know that as soon as we have news, we’ll share it here, as well as through our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter.