14 DAY TRIAL // Though it has been manufacturing e-paper screens for a while, it appears that, if reports are to be believed, Samsung has decided to completely back out of the e-paper manufacturing business, focusing, instead, on the making of liquid crystal displays (LCDs).
E-paper, while it is restricted to grayscale 'color' support, has been used ion a wide variety of products, such as the rapidly ascending e-readers, because of tis energy efficiency.
In fact, all e-readers so far unveiled, save for a few such as the Pandigital Novel, use this type of display.
Granted, there have definitely been demonstrations of prototypes using LCDs instead of black-and-white/grayscale solutions, but they have yet to actually reach stores or, indeed, materialize into actual products.
The other asset of this screen technology is that it enables lower price points, and this is fairly important for such single-purpose devices.
Still, it seems that Samsung has reached the conclusion that it is no longer worthwhile, for itself, to keep making such panels.
Unfortunately, the Yonhap News report was quite vague and did not elaborate in the slightest on the exact reasons.
All that was said was that the outfit is backing out of this market entirely because of so-called cost problems.
Moving forward, the company will focus on liquid crystal display (LCD) research and development, even though they are not as energy-efficient.
Since LCDs have now become quite cheap, they have become the display of choice for even electronics, such as tablets, of smaller screen sizes.
Nevertheless, the real reason they are becoming the focal point of Samsung's attention is, obviously, the fact that they have color support.
The report did not say how long it will take for the IT player to completely remove itself from this market. As for e-reader plans, while it is dropping e-paper, the outfit will still deal in e-reader, only with LCDs, and a model is reportedly bound for release next year.