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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

>it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire

This is somewhat of a misconception. The high cost today has nothing to do with patents anymore, for the most part, though that' still a speedbump. It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem, and that's where e-ink has the secret sauce and why others can't compete even though they know how it works.

It's like saying TSMC's 3nm won't get any traction until it's patents expire, while the true vale comes form the fact that only they can get that process to scale profitably and their competition can't, even though they have access to the same tech and materials and $$$ funds.

So, I'm sure there are competitors who can replicate the e-ink tech. But to fab it profitably at that scale? Nope.

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I would love to be a fly on the wall when the unit price calculation for some high tech item is made. I wonder if it just goes like “component x + y + margin%”… what those components are in stuff like processors, screens etc must be so interesting!

It cost us $X billion to set up the line, materials, marketing etc. We expect to sell $Y quantity. Price = $X / $Y.

Or more usually, it seems: "We think we can get $N for it; so if we can make it for $N/10 we'll announce production and find a manufacturing partner to make them for us on credit."

> It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem

There is a decent market for rigid (heavy) 20-30" ~100 dpi panels as desktop monitors. Lowering the pixel density would certainly increase the yield, as would the rigid back. There is a high premium for light panels for e-readers and portables, but for use as a desktop monitor, we can deal with a lot more weight and, since we see them from further away, we can deal with lower densities.

From where I sit, it's hard to tell whether my laptop has a high-density screen or a more normal 1080 one.

I'd love to have one, but I wouldn't even consider it if it's twice as expensive as a 4K HDR 120Hz LCD monitor.

>There is a decent market for rigid (heavy) 20-30" ~100 dpi panels as desktop monitors.

Do you have a source for these claims?

Looking at what seels well today, and what most average consumers go for, it's bigger screens with high pixel density. Low pixel density displays are mostly found in bottom of the barrel, discount bin products whith poor margins for their manufacturers, so the market has already spoken with their money in this regard and separated the winners from the losers.

So I think, that market you think of, exists only for you.

>Lowering the pixel density would certainly increase the yield

That's not how yealds work here. Small display sizes gives you good yealds and affordable price. That's why you mostly see them on electronic shelf labels and ebook readers.

That's why large e-ink displays, like the remarkable tablet, are so expensive.

> Do you have a source for these claims?

No. There are no products in this space that can compete with the midrange LCD displays.

> So I think, that market you think of, exists only for you.

I'm sure Boox would be happy to be able to sell a 24" 1920x1200 display for $200, if they had an adequate supply of panels.

> That's not how yealds work here.

If you increase feature size, you, usually, have fewer defects. A 20" 200 dpi panel has 4 times more places where something could go wrong than a 100 dpi one, and its features would be more prone to fail for defects the same size. Lower resolution should decrease the areal density of detectable defects because the defects would be less likely to disable the pixel. Unless I'm completely wrong and the kind of defect on e-ink panels is completely different than defects on ICs and PCBs.

Yield for smaller displays works differently - areal density of defects being the same, a smaller panel has a smaller chance of having a defect.

> That's why large e-ink displays, like the remarkable tablet, are so expensive.

The Remarkable is a high density display and they sell it for the price people are willing to pay.

>No. There are no products in this space that can compete with the midrange LCD displays.

Then how can you make such claims? You're just blowing smoke at this point. My take: The are no such products because nobody would buy them, that's why nobody makes them.

If you think the market is wrong, and there's such a huge demand waiting for a product that doesn't yet exist, why not put your money where your mouth is and go all-in funding such a product? If you're right, you'd get rich. Or you're actually wrong, and it will flop massively. Which one is it?

>Yield for smaller displays works differently - areal density of defects being the same, a smaller panel has a smaller chance of having a defect.

Yeah, that's why cutting the e-ink film into smaller displays gets you better yields, since you can throw away the smaller sections with the defects, instead of discarding larger ones, and lower the costs, which, like I said previously, is why you mostly see smaller e-ink displays based products, and why the ones with large screens are so expensive.

>A 20" 200 dpi panel has 4 times more places where something could go wrong than a 100 dpi one

Genuine question: do you have any industry experience working with e-ink displays, or are you just making uninformed assumptions for the sake of an armchair argument? As, that's not how yields scale in e-ink film. Source: I worked designing devices with e-ink displays.

> Genuine question: do you have any industry experience working with e-ink displays

No. I’m doing math. A 200dpi panel has 4 times more components per area than a 100dpi one. You can check it, if you are not sure.

Do you have experience with e-ink panel manufacture?

>No. I’m doing math. A 200dpi panel has 4 times more components per area than a 100dpi one. You can check it, if you are not sure.

Defect rates don't scale linearly to density IRL as you assume, and the type of defects changes as well. This is not the same as semiconductor manufacturing though plenty of parallels can be drawn.

>Do you have experience with e-ink panel manufacture?

I have deep insight in this industry due to my development experience with this tech. So the manufacturers tutor us on the nitty gritty details of the tech which stem from the manufacturing limitations, as my employers are making expensive purchases from them.

Of course, you are free to believe that I'm wrong and your kindergarten math is the answer to a profitable product to which the industry are completely oblivious too.

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