Marvell and E Ink Corp. are collaborating on highly integrated processors in complete turnkey platforms aimed at the fast-growing eReader market. These new platforms are expected to accelerate the rapid release of new forms of eReaders at a variety of price points.
"With this announcement, Marvell raises the technology bar and takes the lead in the eReader market," said Weili Dai, Marvell's Co-founder and Vice President and General Manager of the Company's Consumer and Computing Business Unit at Marvell Semiconductor Inc. "Because this is a total platform solution -- including Marvell key technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G modem, and power management -- the ARMADA eReader has the potential to deliver the first mass market product accessible and affordable to billions of consumers around the world."
As one of the fastest growing consumer markets, eReaders continue to grow in popularity due to falling retail prices, improved features, and fast growing library of digital content. According to a recent iSuppli Research report, eReaders are projected to top 18 million units shipped in 2012, from 1.1 million units last year.
"Our collaboration with Marvell will deliver an integrated System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution to the market," said Sriram Peruvemba, Vice President of Marketing at E Ink. "This SoC solution is aimed at offering highly desired features at competitive price points."
Marvell and E Ink have been working together and co-developing products for the ePaper market. The recently signed agreement between E Ink and Marvell includes joint development and cross licensing of next generation ePaper timing controllers and system platforms, which the companies anticipate will result in higher integration and lower cost solutions for eReader manufacturers.
Central to this new eReader platform is the world's first commercially available SoC that integrates a high performance processor and state of the art EPD controller on a single chip -- the Marvell ARMADA 166E application processor. The ARMADA 166E is designed to offer users ultra fast renderings of high resolution PDF documents and support for the latest ePaper technologies in new smaller, slimmer form factors with lower system cost than the competition. The ARMADA 166E also brings to eReaders new features that save power and extend battery life including a unique hibernation mode, or zero power mode.
The two companies have also joined forces with FirstPaper, to integrate unique technology into the ARMADA 166E. This joint innovation enables a range of display sizes and resolutions, including support for larger screens that will deliver layouts, graphics, and content choices that people normally associate with periodicals, larger-format books, and documents.
"Periodicals are the next big frontier in eReading," said Gil Fuchsberg, President of FirstPaper, which will bring a new eReading ecosystem to market in 2010. "To enable great newspaper and magazine reading experiences, eReading devices need the right tools to make richer layouts and complex content come to life. We're excited to be working with Marvell to bring such tools to the market." Device manufacturers will be able to take full advantage of FirstPaper's integrated content and commerce platform with the ARMADA 166E.
E Ink
Marvell
