>> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...
>
> But LCD hasn't changed how a screen is used, it's just made it a bit more 
> efficient and a bit smaller (and, arguably, a bit crapper, certainly in 
> the low end of the TV market).  E-paper requires a whole new product

You mean like how LCD has popped up in cars, phones, portable navigation 
devices and games consoles etc - none of which had any sort of graphic 
display before LCD.

> and a whole new set of habits from the consumer. This will take a little 
> longer. I don't expect to see e-paper widely used anytime soon, and only 
> maybe within my lifetime.

As I already said, ePaper is already used in supermarkets, it will only be a 
matter of years (not decades) before it becomes more cost-efficient than a 
lot of existing paper-and-ink based things.

Sure, it's not going to replace a real book or a newspaper for a long time 
(perhaps never), but there are plenty of other markets that ePaper will take 
over relatively soon.

Another example is the odometer in cars - the OEMs are already asking for a 
zero-power display for this so that it is always visible.  Expect to see 
ePaper based odometers within 10 years in cars, and cars have one of the 
longest product development cycles.

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