Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Fujitsu Flepia e-paper system targets in-store advertisers

Also from MediaSoon comes this note about Fujitsu's new e-paper system designed for advertisers. Electronic paper uses power only when changing its image, thus a single battery can last an extremely long time provided you're not changing your images constantly (and of course the system's no good for animations or video yet). While e-paper is eventually expected to be used in everything from cell phones to e-books to billboards, the system's high price tag currently has Fujitsu looking for buyers who might not be as price conscious as consumers.

Sure, we all know that the ad industry will try anything once, but seriously, $20,000 for an A5 sized electronic sign? For that price, one could by a 60" plasma screen and several miles of extension cord, and still have money left over to pay the electric company.

Tags: Flepia, e-ink, electronic paper, advertising

2 comments:

Mike Halloran said...

I guess you could deploy it as a countertop catalogue reader ... except that the display update is hideously slow. An old computer displaying decent local pdf files would be faster. Most days, an old computer fetching pdf pages over dialup could do as well. Old computers are much cheaper, and paper is _so_ much faster to search or browse.

I.e., if it's intended to be interactive, the glacial display makes the storage capacity irrelevant, because nobody is going to wait for it.

If it's intended for deployment as in-store or transport quasi- static advertising and has wireless capability, then I don't understand why it needs, or should have, _any_ buttons.

Maybe if I were a traveling salesman, perhaps offering semi- custom ... something, out of a catalogue too big to carry in a car, I could preselect stuff for an intimate presentation, but I'd want a powerful search function, and I'd want to be able to print a copy of the page displayed, or pop the whole display into a customer's copier for that purpose. But I could do that now with a decent laptop and portable printer, at the expense of a somewhat smaller display.

Speaking of display, it could be used as an adjunct to a laptop, an auxiliary large format display that could be imaged and passed from hand to hand or set up on a table, sort of replacing a small projector for a large multiple of the price.

When I saw the first announcements about e-ink, a very long time ago, I figured maybe a store could use it to replace the large- text paper signage above a display, usually highlighting a single feature or an attractive price, which could be updated in real time. Maybe in another 20 years the price will become competitive with paper.

Right now, I don't see a market for it. I suppose if I did, I'd be selling it

Anonymous said...

Where can i but E-Paper? I need it for a School project. Can anyone help me?