E Ink is the sole supplier of all epaper displays used on Kindles, Remarkables, Kobos and many other brands, and that’s one of the main reasons why E Ink screens are so much more expensive than other types of displays.
Someone on YouTube attempted to build an eNote for cheap, and he discovered that it was impossible to do because E Ink screens are super expensive. Only one company makes them, and they can charge whatever they want, and there’s simply no way around it.
E Ink has no real competition in the ereader and eNote space. This is something that’s been well known for years, but it’s good to see people talking about it and pointing out how E Ink has a monopoly over this particular market.
What’s surprising is the fact that E Ink’s patent on electrophoretic displays ended in 2017, but as the video below points out, the company that owns E Ink bought up all their main competitors before the patent ended so they wouldn’t have any competition.
Now E Ink is posting massive profits each year, and there’s no one left to challenge them in the epaper display market. Even Amazon has to bend a knee to them.
Apparently the tiny micropixels that make up E Ink screens are hard to make, and there’s a high failure rate, which increases with larger screens, so it’s not something other companies can easily replicate. E Ink has been making epaper screens for over 20 years, and they know exactly what they’re doing and how to control the market.
Hopefully at some point another company or a new type of display technology will be able step up and compete with E Ink. Until then, expect the prices of E Ink screens to keep going up while they can still charge whatever they want to keep increasing profits.
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