CES: Mirasol e-readers still several months away
Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
The e-reader may have been one of the hottest holiday gifts, with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Sony, and others selling millions of devices, but it was decidedly absent at this year’s CES–unless, of course, you count all the Android tablets floating around.
The company a lot of people were watching was Qualcomm-backed Mirasol, which made a splash a year ago with its new, reflective color display technology that’s energy-efficient, runs full-motion video, and can be viewed in direct sunlight. Alas, Mirasol had no product to announce, only that it was working with vendors such as Pocketbook, which sells primarily into Europe, to bring out an e-reader later this year. How much that e-reader will cost and when it will hit the market are very much up in the air.
Mirasol didn’t have its own booth, but a small showcase was set up in Qualcomm’s booth, and the technology–intriguing as ever–was definitely getting a lot of attention. The prototypes Qualcomm was showing seem improved from earlier models the company had been teasing reporters with at previous events, and PR reps were careful to note that the video loop on the prototype’s screen was indeed running at a smooth 30 fps (some reports speculated that the company was having trouble getting the frame rates up to promised full-motion speeds).
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