Chip companies pursue a bestseller
High expectations for a booming e-reader market have semiconductor vendors competing for OEM designs.
By Tam Harbert, Contributing Editor -- EDN, March 23, 2010
Five years ago, when E Ink Corp was looking for a company to build a controller for its novel e-paper display, not a single semiconductor supplier was interested, according to Sriram K. Peruvemba, E Ink’s vice president of marketing. Then Amazon introduced the Kindle, which uses E Ink’s display, and e-reader volumes started to ramp. Suddenly, “we had every single semiconductor company knocking on our door.”
Today, chip companies are knocking on more doors than E Ink’s and are designing more than controllers. In fact, several semiconductor companies are now collaborating with E Ink, other e-paper display vendors, and publishers to come up with integrated system-on-chips and e-reader reference platforms. The semiconductor suppliers are competing with each other to integrate functions, reduce costs, and enable OEMs to get to market with the next generation of e-readers, expected by the end of the year.
E-readers are becoming one of the cool gadgets to have. DisplaySearch forecasts that shipments will rise from 15 million units this year to more than 90 million by 2018. (See table below.) Semico Research expects e-reader shipments of 30 million units by 2013, with revenues of $2.7 billion (based on OEM average selling prices). And these figures include only devices that use electrophoretic e-paper displays such as E Ink’s. More than 90% of the e-readers on the market use E Ink’s display technology, according to Jennifer Colegrove, director of display technologies at DisplaySearch. The statistics don’t count netbooks and tablets that can be used as e-readers but that use liquid-crystal displays, such as Apple’s iPad.
| E-reader forecast (number of units shipped worldwide) | |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 1 million |
| 2009 | 5 million |
| 2010 | 15 million |
| 2018 | more than 90 million units |
| Source: DisplaySearch | |
Source: Semico Research Corp.
While e-readers have been on the market since 2004, when Sony introduced one in Japan, says Colegrove, several things have come together recently to increase their popularity. More books, magazines, and newspapers have become available for e-readers, and e-readers have adopted wireless technology so that content can be downloaded quickly without having to connect to a PC. Indeed, Amazon was able to capture the public’s imagination with its introduction and marketing of the Kindle. In addition, the electronics, particularly memory, have become smaller and cheaper.
The main semiconductor components in e-readers are memory (NAND flash), logic (general purpose logic, memory controller, display driver and controller, audio/video, and WiFi chips) and micro logic (embedded microprocessor.) The logic and micrologic combined had a value of just $16 million in 2008, according to Michell Prunty, senior consumer analyst at Semico. He forecasts that will grow to more than a half-billion dollars by 2013. Total e-reader semiconductor revenue will grow from $121 million in 2009 to $952 million in 2013, Semico predicts.
The first version of the Kindle, introduced in 2007, used an Xscale processor (which Intel sold to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. in 2006) and a controller designed by E Ink called Apollo. The Kindle 2, introduced in February 2009, uses a Freescale Semiconductor ARM-11-based processor and a controller from Epson. Because of the popularity of the Kindle 2, Freescale’s processor dominates the e-reader market.
The wave of integration started last year, when Epson combined the SDRAM and flash memory into the display controller, says Peruvemba. More recently, Marvell, Texas Instruments, and Freescale went further and integrated the display controller and microprocessor. In November 2009, Marvell announced it was collaborating with E Ink and introduced the Armada 166E application processor, which integrates microprocessor and display controller.
Then at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010, both Marvell and TI announced e-reader reference platforms. Marvell announced two e-reader reference platforms based on the 166E. For one, it is teaming with Skiff LLC, an e-reader maker backed by publisher Hearst. The e-reader development kit includes software support for Skiff’s upcoming “e-reading service and digital storefront, which will enable consumers to easily access and wirelessly download a wide range of newspapers, magazines, books, blogs, and other content from multiple publishers,” according to the press release.
For the other, Marvell teamed with LCD panel maker AU Optronics Corp to offer a reference platform to support AU Optronic’s e-paper display panels.
TI announced that it was entering the e-reader market with its OMAP 3 processor and a reference platform. The OMAP3621 is a lower-cost version of TI’s smartphone chip, according to Gregg Burke, worldwide manager of TI’s e-book business line. The company removed peripherals and interfaces that weren’t needed for the e-reader. At the same time, it developed a software-based display controller that replaces several hardware components and a power-management IC that integrates display drivers and a temperature sensor. The programmability and flexibility of TI’s platform gives OEMs freedom to differentiate their products in many ways, says Burke.
“This market is emerging and there’s no telling what form factors or what type of displays [OEMs might use],” he says.
TI also announced that it was working with E Ink and Liquavista BV to integrate their display technology into TI’s reference platform.
Most recently, in March Freescale announced its e-reader SOC, called the i.MX508 applications processor, which integrates the its processor with E Ink’s latest display controller. In announcing the chip and a reference design developed with E Ink, Freescale said the i.MX508 could lower system costs by 50%, compared to e-readers that use a separate hardware controller.
While lowering costs is a prime focus for chip vendors, they are also competing in a number of performance areas, says Colegrove. These include lower power consumption, enabling faster page refreshes, and sufficient horsepower to render complex images and process color.
Indeed, the ability to render high-quality color has so far eluded e-paper display vendors, says Colegrove, noting that E Ink has been working on color for five years. (Peruvemba says E Ink plans to introduce color technology by the end of this year.) Other companies working on color are Qualcomm, with its MEMS-based mirasol technology, and Liquavista.
