An American company, E Ink Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is gearing up to replace black and white e-book readers with a colour version, expected to be on the market by the end of 2010.
The company says that it will be demonstrating a colour version of its e-paper at the Society for Information Display conference in San Antonio, Texas, on 31 May.
E Ink says that the new version of the e-book reader would be aimed at having a reflective display that uses very little power and is as easy on the eye as the printed word. It has been revealed that the colour version will be based on technology called an electrophoretic display.
In the new colour display, each pixel will be split into four sub-pixels showing red, green, blue and white in their "on" states. This implies squeezing four times as many transistors beneath each pixel to control the electrodes, which has been a challenge too far, until now.
"The transistor resolution is now getting fine enough," New Scientist magazine quoted Sri Peruvemba of E Ink saying.