Taiwan-based Delta Electronics has recently invested NT$2-3 billion (US$69.97-104.95 million) to develop e-paper technologies at its plants in Taiwan. But as demand for e-book readers has been severely impacted by tablet PCs, Delta believes the current market status is not right for a newcomer, and therefore the company will observe the e-book reader market for another 3-6 months. Meanwhile, Delta said it will continue its e-paper R&D and is optimistic about the potential of e-paper applications in the future.

Delta CEO Yancey Hai explained further and noted that due to demand for e-book readers not being very strong recently, the company is not in a hurry to cut into the market, but will continue to observe and wait for the right time to enter.

Delta also added that the company's future R&D focus for e-paper will be for color-related technologies and will expand the market scale of large-size color e-paper for products such as e-magazine, e-newspaper or outdoor digital signage applications.

For now, Delta's e-paper production lines will be working on e-paper-based label, magazine and digital-signage.

E-book reader
Photo: Digitimes file photo