E-paper is Finally Upon Us!

After many years of promise and a few false starts last week Fujitsu announces it has created the 'first' colour non volatile e-paper. Philips and HP have also been developing similar products for a number of years.

But if we are to finally believe the hype, what are the implications for the creative industry as a whole...

Firstly, what is e-paper?

It is a film substrate that's flexible enough to allow the 'paper' to be distorted but stable enough to ensure the image remains true - even when pressed (unlike LCD panels).

The e-paper does not require any light source and 'remembers' the image displayed on it - so reducing the amount of power required to keep an image displayed. Essentially once an image is 'written' to the e-paper it can remain there without using power. This has the advantage therefore of requiring much lower power in operation and only needs to be powered when the image changes.

The commercial release for this is due somewhere in the 12 months up until March 2007 - so we could be seeing requirements for e-paper by the middle of 2006!

The immediate applications for this are pretty obvious;

POS material for in-store promotions - instantly updating prices or simply changing 'campaigns' at the click of a mouse (with all the creative work done first of course!).
Airports, train stations and even planes and trains themselves could soon be adorned with e-paper.
Perhaps even outdoor poster sites will be controlled from a central workstation - updating the posters electronically instead of 'pasting' them up.
Even 'fly posting' might simply become a form of 'cyber crime' where legitimate posters are overwritten by a 'hacker'...
In any event, clearly the above would have implications for the wider creative community - the immediacy of updating the image might be seen similarly to content management systems for websites - where clients can update the image without reference to the originating designers...with all the advantages and disadvantages that brings.

The implications for the printing industry are also pretty obvious.

So, what other applications could e-paper be used for?

We have recently seen what the introduction of new technology has meant for the print industry with the 'death of print' in the face of the internet. But we now recognise that whilst there is certainly a readjustment in the face of market conditions, there has been little substitute for quality print in the hand and on the move.

But is this about to change?

Could we see 'newspapers' being uploaded as you pass a newsstand onto your single rolled up 'e-paper', perhaps having been paid for using your mobile phone?

How about a library of books in one 'ebook' that simply refreshes the pages of text with another book from a local 'chip' or downloaded from the internet - after all, Google are scanning millions of books now to make them available as part of their search engine. eBooks have also been talked about for many years, and Sony launched their 'electronic book' in 2004, but it is not the same.

As someone once said - 'the possibilities are infinite', no doubt we'll just have to wait and see.