E Ink Revenues Drop in April, Overall On-Year Result Still Good

E Ink may have scored a sort of record during the last quarter of 2011, but it looks like not every month so far returned positive financial results, although the situation is still one that favors the company.

The one thing about finances is that they change with the times and can vary from splendid to dismal, sometimes even jumping from one end to another.

In a manner of speaking, this is what happened to Acer and other netbook/notebook makers because of how tablets have been eroding laptop sales.

Still, even though some companies have been changing their direction, others were content with just enjoying the ride, especially those that found themselves mostly outside slates' sphere of influence.

E Ink is one of this latter sort of company, being a developer of screens used in devices that haven't really suffered from the rise of the tablet.

Granted, there were, initially, some rumors saying that e-readers would lose market share because of the fact that tablets could incorporate their functions.

Turns out, however, that such devices, as well as anything else using greyscale, e-paper displays have been doing just fine.

The first hint was E Ink's record revenues during the fourth quarter of 2010, although the results were tallied after the January figure was found.

Now, it is revealed that, even though April did bring an on-month drop of 26.59%, the quarterly revenues for the January-April period

This was because, despite the on-month drop, the figure of NT$2.465 billion, which is the equivalent of US$84 million, was still up on-year, by no less than 45.41% in fact.

As for the January-April period, revenues were 87.11% higher compared to those of the same period of 2010 (NT$12.551 billion). It remains to be seen if this trend continues even despite no new e-paper screen being planned for 2011.