TechFocus
The future of newspaper: Paper or plastic?
Environmentalists have always dreamed of a world where humans no longer need to cut down trees for paper. Sometimes, even literacy comes at a cost. In view of saving the endangered trees of the planet, more and more offices around the world are moving towards paperless endeavours by computerising most of their transactions, for example through online banking and using email and SMS for sharing documents and information. One industry that mainly thrives on paper is the newspaper industry. Besides environmental issues, newspaper offices are struggling with higher production and delivery costs and decreased ad revenue from their printed product. What's more, online versions of newspapers are driving away more and more readers with the appeal of being free of cost, but not providing enough online revenue to make up for the difference. A Washington, D.C.-based research group estimated that if online ad revenue kept growing at 33 percent annually, it would still take a decade to break even with much larger print-ad revenues, which were growing at 4 percent. Enter Amazon group and its newfound wireless electronic book-reader 'kindle', which can deliver any one of more than 88,000 books, including bestsellers, simply by downloading though a wireless network connection, and possibilities open up for a similar device to deliver newspapers, that will use kindle's key technology 'electronic ink'. E Ink uses electronic ink for display: millions of tiny capsules filled with light and dark dyes that change color - charged dye particles move either up or down within the capsules - when exposed to an electric charge. Text using e-ink appears with the same crisp clarity as print on paper, and the battery that runs the device draws little power, allowing it to go a week before it needs a two-hour recharge. Unlike liquid-crystal display of computer monitors and televisions, electronic paper technology does not need a backlight; remains displayed even when the power source runs down; and looks brighter, not dimmer, in strong light. Amazon currently offers 24 newspapers for use on the device. Subscribers pay $5.99 to $14.99 per month, and each issue arrives wirelessly before sunup. Plastic Logic now has a version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look - but not the feel - of a printed newspaper. Newspaper companies have watched the technology closely for years. The ideal format, a flexible display that could be rolled or folded like a newspaper, is still years off, but color displays with moving images and interactive clickable advertising is foreseen to be coming in only a few more years. It is expected that within the next few years there will exist a technology that allows users to write on the screen and view videos. At a recent demonstration at E Ink's headquarters, the company showed prototypes of flexible displays that can create rudimentary colors and animated images. Three requirements can be cited for e-newspapers to really catch on with consumers: the devices require larger screens (to allow room for better display of stories, photos and ads), color screens (a must for advertisers) and lower prices (the Kindle currently sells for $359). Color is still a few years away, but several companies will soon launch e-readers with screens the size of an 8.5-by-11-inch piece of paperand unlike existing e-readers, which have glass screens, these next-generation machines will use flexible, plastic screens that readers won't have to worry about cracking. The big question for newspaper companies is how much people will pay for a device and the newspaper subscription for it. Papers face a tough competitor: their own Web sites, where the information is free. And they have trained a generation of new readers to expect free news. The challenge involved in creating a viable electronic newspaper is to develop a device that has the desirable characteristics of traditional paper in addition to its own inherent benefits (such as being automatically refreshable). Like traditional paper, the electronic newspaper must be lightweight, flexible, high-resolution, glare-free, and affordable, if it is to gain consumer approval. The makers of electronic books propose that the device could cost about the same as a year's subscription to a regular newspaper.
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