Turns Out E Ink Not The Only Company Making, Marketing Large Format Color E-Paper Displays

March 28, 2025 by Dave Haynes

There were a dozen or so pure-play and specialty display manufacturers at Integrated Systems Europe last month showing their adaptations of base E Ink color displays as their own early-stage or prototype products. One of the questions I was getting over there from industry people when we talked about that was around competition: As in “is there anyone else doing color e-paper???”

There are other ESL (electronic shelf label) companies with some color support, I’d say, but I didn’t THINK there were other companies making larger format stuff that wasn’t using E Ink as the core e-paper component.

Turns out there is one … based (surprise!!!) in China. Guangzhou OED Technologies says it has developed color e-paper displays that are 30 inches and above and have a video refresh rate of up to 18 frames per second. That’s not a conventional frame rate of 24 for film or 30 for TVs and monitors, but would at least border on smooth … or maybe smooth-ish.

A separate story drafting off a press release suggests the company is making and shipping 31.2-inch color displays, which would actually be JUST smaller than E Ink’s 31.5-inch Spectra 6 color displays. However, the Spectra 6 does not formally support video. There is a 42-inch Kaleido available, but that’s a limited color product.

E Ink also demo’d a 75-inch Kaleido with several partners at ISE.

I am wondering now if this recent Geniatech demo of a video-supported e-paper display is the OED, given the very specific 31.2-inch size. I THINK the guy in the interview says E Ink, but that could be a lot in translation thing.

I don’t even want to dip my toes into the patent mire of this, but will just note a quick Google suggests E Ink and OED have had their intellectual property disputes for several years. Like this one.

This is from state-controlled China Daily news agency, as is the image above:

“Compared to traditional LCD or OLED screens, the e-paper display screen has significant advantages in terms of low power consumption, making it particularly suitable for applications in outdoor settings that require long-term operation,” said Chen Yu, founder and general manager of OED.

The large screen design provides users with a broader field of view and the ability to maintain high contrast and clear visibility even in bright light or direct sunlight, according to Chen.

“This feature makes it uniquely valuable in outdoor digital signage, bus stop displays, public information screens and other scenarios,” said Chen.

The product’s core innovation lies in the unified control of split screens, optimized image processing algorithms and local display functions.

“It can dynamically refresh specific areas of the screen and control the synchronization of split screens on large displays, significantly improving response speed and refresh efficiency,” said Chen.

The product has entered the mass production stage and is expected to be officially launched in the market within the next two months, according to the company.

“The introduction of this technology not only fulfills the expectations of the e-paper industry for dynamic displays but also provides a new technological path for low-carbon dynamic digital displays,” said Chen.

The company, based in Guangzhou’s Nansha district, unveiled its high-speed color electronic paper in November last year, marking a significant breakthrough for e-paper technology in terms of color display, refresh rate and user experience.

The market size of e-paper products in China has expanded rapidly in recent years, and they are being applied in areas including electronic tags, e-readers, smart education, smart homes and outdoor advertising.

“Particularly in electronic tags and e-readers, e-paper technology has been widely adopted,” said Guo Zhiyou, a professor at the School of Electronics and Information Engineering of South China Normal University.

The e-paper industry and its terminal products have a market size of nearly 100 billion yuan ($13.77 billion) in China, with a market growth rate of around 20 percent in recent years.

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