E-ink is getting closer -- Kindle starts a new blaze of interest

Now here is a fascinating story by Bill Richards is a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post reporter who covered the Seattle newspapers' joint operating agreement for The Seattle Times under a three-year contract that ended in 2005.
He creates a hypothetical paper with circ of 100,000 and explore the actual costs and ad revenue around the issue of going paperless. The economics is pretty interesting. There are many savings in "variable cost" items, like the newsprint, gas for trucks, if the content is delivered via e-ink.

Does this mean "print is dead?" No, instead, print will become like the darkroom produced photo, the artist printed book, the LP or CD artist boxed set, a thing to treasure and hold, but all the news will be e-ink, not fish-wrap anymore.

He calculates ad revenues if there were no paper paper for ads to run in. And the time to profitibility shrinks. I think the assumptions he makes that there will be only the Kindle and an e-ink reader by Hearst could be challenged. The upcoming USDC Annual Flexible Electronics and Displays Conference
is all about R& D in flexible electronics. LG has been talking about a flexible e-ink reader since 2005. My economic assumption would be that soon after the Kindle, will some a host of other e-ink readers, and the price will fall. Of course, there will be an idiotic battle over closed systems and standards (or lack of them) in an effort to corner the market, but I think the eventual move will be to an open-standard format for readers and an effective micropayment system.

g — eliminate production and distribution costs — is the same goal Hearst has for its E Ink newspaper venture. The E Ink technology, says James McQuivey, a newspaper technology analyst for Forrester Research, "is probably the single largest display innovation of this decade."

Source: crosscut.com

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