AU Optronics Planning 10-Inch, A4 Touchscreen Epaper

The scaling up of business partnerships in the approach to the launch of Plastic Logic's eponymous ebook reader, together with the sell-out success of the Amazon Kindle DX certainly seems to suggest that there's a market out there for large-scale e-paper devices, and that's a segment manufacturer AU Optronics seem keen to capitalize on.  According to CEO LJ Chen, the company is ramping up to produce 10-inch and A4 (8 x 11 inch) sized e-paper panels.

Those large sizes will follow the company's 6- to 9-inch e-paper panels, which should see mass shipments beginning in Q3 2009.  These will be available in in-cell or on-cell touch panel versions, for pen and finger input, and build on AUO's fifth-generation production lines.

Shipments of e-labels – smaller-scale e-paper used to display dynamically changing price and transit labels used in retail and other segments – have already begin, using AUO's fourth-gen production facilities.  However the company posted a net loss in its Q209 financial report, with revenue up NT$82.5bn ($2.51bn) but losses of NT$6.6bn ($201m).  Back in June AUO demonstrated a 6-inch dual-screen ebook reader with capacitive touchscreens.