14 DAY TRIAL // E-readers are growing in sales by the day, as is evident from how the Amazon Kindle and its rivals have been selling by the thousands, and Sony seeks to gain an edge in the competition by revealing a flexible e-paper.
E-paper can be said to almost hold a monopoly over e-readers, even despite some companies' attempts at using other screens, like LCD.
This is because of their very low power draw, compared to liquid crystal displays, which has, so far, offset the fact that they lack color support.
Moving forward, e-paper is, naturally, expected to evolve and keep the pace with e-readers themselves, which means that new technologies need to emerge.
The high demand for color aside, another idea that developers came up with is the flexible e-paper, such as the one Sony presented at its Dealer Convention in Tokyo.
According to reports, the new technology revealed by the hardware maker can roll up like actual newspaper.
Normally, this would not be possible because e-paper traditionally employs glass substrate, but Sony resolved this issue by going for plastic substrate instead.
Granted, this is not the first flexible e-paper technology unveiled so far, LG having already announced one that will measure 19 inches in diagonal, along with a 9.7-inch color display.
Still, according to the report, the Sony e-paper looked to be quite far along in terms of development, even speculating that the time of arrival should be of one or two years.
It will be interesting to see just what kind of electronics this e-paper makes it into once it does finally become a viable product form a marketing standpoint.
What remains to be seen is how the makers of e-reader can truly use this technology to its full potential, considering that they will still have to put the rest of the hardware somewhere.