Last week Digitimes posted an article about a new startup called Linfiny, a joint venture backed by E Ink and Sony. The article is hidden behind an annoying paywall but you can find it if you run a search for “Linfiny Digitimes”.
Basically the article states that Linfiny, which was first started in April 2017, is getting set to start operations later this year.
The company will focus primarily on developing new E Ink notebooks.
Here’s a quote from the article:
The e-notebook products being developed by Linfiny will come with pen-writing functionality and will target professional and educational markets…
Linfiny will also look for replacement markets for its e-notebook products in the technology, legal, financial and medical care sectors where demand for electronic documents and digital search is strong.
The article also goes on to say that vendors of E Ink products in China, Europe, Japan, and the US will start making new e-notebook devices available later in 2017.
Considering there are practically no E Ink vendors in the US outside of Amazon with the Kindle and Sony with their own DPT-RP1, that statement seems rather illogical. But that are other international vendors that ship to the US, like with the new reMarkable tablet that is getting released later this month.
The concept of developing new e-notebooks that will directly compete with the Sony DPT-RP1 also seems a bit odd. Sony just released the DPT-RP1 a couple months ago and the hardware is darn near perfect. What they need to do is focus on developing the software side of things instead of leaving it half-finished.
via: MobileRead
I think it makes sense in a way, making it under another name, maybe even having WIFI and web access too. I think Sony is finally seeing where the future is headed in a paperless society along with handwriting capabilities; plus they have the tech.
This concerns me. I own one of the new DPT-RP1s and love it. However, I’ve been trying to get new pen tips for the stylus for about a week and they are still showing as unavailable on Amazon and BHPhoto. The tips wear out really fast and there are no other replacements as far as I can tell. The RP1 might be useless to me in a month if I can’t get new ones and now I’m worried about 6 or 10 months from now…
What do folks with the earlier model do?
If the screen is detachable that would be awesome. Plus if its a laptop theres a stronger chance we can hack Windows onto it if they decide to screw us over with their draconian walled garden software again
I’m guessing this means that Sony is uninterested in software development and that the RP1 has just been a design proof for third party licensees. So, about a year before the software sees significant upgrade.