E Ink Holdings, the firm which provided the ePaper technology for Amazon's Kindle, announced on May 24 its newly built display named Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP) which has the capacity to create up to 32,000 colors.
People should not get their hopes up for an e-reader that comes with ACeP, though, as the firm says that it is currently positioning this new display technology for digital signage.
The world's leading innovator of ink technology said in a press release that this breakthrough technology is a "high quality, full color reflective display."
"We expect ACeP to become the basis upon which another generation of EPD display products can be developed," said the Chairman of E Ink, Frank Ko.
The ACeP enables the so-called electrophoretic display (EDP) to generate full color "at every pixel" without making use of a color filter array (CFA).
"For the first time, we can create all colors at every pixel location," Giovanni Mancini, the firm's Head of Global Marketing, told Mashable. "We have encapsulated four different things in one micro-cup."
The four things Mancini is referring to are four pigments, which include cyan, yellow, white and magenta.
"The richness of the colors is achieved by having all the colored pigments in every picture element (pixel) rather than the side-by-side pixel colors achieved with a CFA," explained E Ink in its press release.
Mancini, in the meantime, further explained that the capability to control the four pigments is crucial.
Every pigment comes with properties that allow E Ink to have control on the pigments' position and movement.
E Ink's new display is a 20-inch one that features a 2,500 x 1,600 resolution.
Furthermore, Mancini told Mashable that the new display, which is power-efficient, can be used as a commercial signage, for instance at a bus stop.
The company launched this display tech during the yearly SID Display Week conference held in San Francisco this week.
It is believed that E Ink's color display will be available in about two years.
It is likewise anticipated that this tech will be fitted into smartphones or e-readers down the line.
E Ink is not the first company to produce a low-power color display. The Mirasol display tech of Qualcomm has been in existence for several years already.
