E-paper History: An Interview with Nick Sheridon, Father of E-paper (2007)

"At this stage, some of the products based on E Ink’s technology are little more than expensive gimmicks, such as Seiko’s limited-edition e-paper watch (priced at over $2,000)."

Compare that with today and a 6" Kindle display costing under $100. A 20x reduction in cost.

It reinforces his next point about the complex relationship between price and volume. If I had to guess what moved the needle on price of E Ink displays, I'd have to say it was Jeff Bezos for being willing to put down a commitment to buying a large amount of panels which then allowed the manufacturer to scale up their production lines in order to reach that level of cost reduction.

" Q: What are the current obstacles facing mass adoption of e-paper technology?

A: The main obstacle is price. Our research shows that the cost of an e-paper-based reader has to fall to under $100 before a significant percentage of the population will buy one. Even then, they will only buy if suitable content is available at a reasonable cost. The second obstacle is availability of content. "

Sidenode, here is another interview with Nick Sheridon from 2009, apparently not even retrievable using Google: https://web.archive.org/web/20090413144446/https://www.epape...