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At a private show at the Tokyo International Forum (July 20-21), Hitachi presented a 13.1-inch monochrome e-paper display that also featured WLAN support and a secondary battery pack. The company is planning to bring it to market at a price lower than LCD panels next April, with the focus being on applications such as signboards at public buildings, according to Nikkei Electronics.

Fujitsu also introduced a colourful and bendable e-paper prototype and said commercialisation will commence before the first quarter of 2007.

The company claims the prototype consumes only one one-hundredth to one ten-thousandth the energy of conventional display technologies, with colour that is vivid and unaffected even when the screen is bent or pressed with fingers.

Sony has also been aggressively developing e-paper technology. The company has been working with Riken, Royal Philips Electronics and E-Ink and recently started using e-paper produced by Taiwan-based Prime View International (PVI), according both Philips and PVI.

Last March, Sony announced that it developed the world's first consumer application of an electronic paper display module with its e-Book reader, LIBRIé.

Seiko Epson has also been working with E-Ink and announced a 2-inch prototype at the Society for Information Display (SID) 2005 International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition in Boston (Mar 22-27).

It also stated that it is working on an A4-size foldable sheet to be used for applications such as business documents, newspapers and books. The company stated it will have commercial applications of the technology within the next five years, according to IDG News Service, as cited by TechWorld.

Commercial e-paper has mainly been monochrome and colour models will not hit the market until 2007, according to DigiTimes Research.