Why newspapers will give away free e-ink devices
Here's an interesting Q&A with Russ Wilcox, chief executive of the Cambridge-Mass. E Ink Corp., an MIT Media Lab spinoff that has invented a precursor to the "Minority Report" newspaper. He says we'll eventually get the newspaper in that movie -- with a flexible, paper-thin video screen with text, images, sound and wireless Internet connection -- but not until around 2015.
He points out that newspapers will eventually give such devices away because it will be cheaper for them to do so than to keep printing on paper. Newspapers are spending $150 per year per reader on making the paper, so within 2 or 3 years you've built up $300 to $500 of budget per reader, he says. So one e-paper devices are created that cost less than $300, it'll be cheaper in the long-run for media companies to buy and give away those devices than to print on paper.
And an interesting aside -- in the Q&A with Wilcox on washingtonpost.com, Washington Post writer Frank Ahrens told readers he'd be writing an article about the future of newspapers and asked them to post about their reading habits.
The next day, Ahrens wrote a story for The Washington Post based in part on the live online chat. Nice job!
Oct 23, 2005 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT
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1 comments about 'Why newspapers will give away free e-ink devices''Why newspapers will give away free e-inkdevices'":
Posted by sitaram at April 10, 2007 7:10 AM
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