Demonstrating a prototype of what he claimed was the world's first colour e-paper, he said the idea of black-and-white e-paper was redundant and the colour version would see first use next year in supermarket displays.

"All the print media has moved to colour. When you read your newspaper, it's in colour. I don't believe the industry will accept going back to a black-and-white format just to embrace the new technology. The technology has to move the printed image on somewhat and add some usability and user value," he told Journalism.co.uk. "The first application will be as electronic labels for supermarkets and that will start next year, with much smaller screens but the same technology in colour."

Nelson added that Fujitsu was looking to form alliances with content providers and tablet manufacturers so that, once the technology was ready, it would not be delayed in getting to market.

"It's probably two years away before we can get the screen manufacturing technology up to scratch for an A5 or bigger size in colour. That is when we can talk about distributing magazines and so forth on it,” Nelson said.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story3189.shtml; 14 February 2007