E Ink Holdings (元太科技), the world’s largest e-paper display supplier, yesterday said its latest 1.73-inch e-paper flexible display has been used in a commercial smartwatch, jointly developed by its subsidiary Transmart Co Ltd (川元電子) and Taipei-based Sonostar Inc (南北星).
The smartwatch is being showcased at the Computex trade show in Taipei by Sonostar and is set to hit the market in the near future, E Ink said in a statement.
Equipped with a 1.73-inch flexible e-paper touch screen that supports 320 x 240 pixel resolution with 16 grayscale levels, the smartwatch has a 180 degree-wide viewing angle, a feature unavailable on tablets and smartphones.
Photo: MANDY CHENG, AFP
“E Ink is extremely pleased that Sonostar has chosen to use E Ink’s ePaper displays in such a cutting edge product,” E Ink marketing director Giovanni Mancini said.
Sonostar, which has developed a series of golf applications for Android and iOS mobile operating systems, said the smartwatch can receive e-mails, text messages and telephone calls via Bluetooth technology from users’ smartphones or “phablets” running either the Android or iOS mobile operating system.
“Sonostar is now moving to the emerging field of smartwatches and wearable computing,” said Joesam Liu (劉俊山), chief executive officer of Sonostar’s smartwatch division.
“The smartwatch’s touch screen interface is much more intuitive than pressing buttons,” Liu said.
The smartwatch is available in black and white, and carries a price tag of US$179, the company said.
Next quarter, the company is set to ship the first batch to markets including Taiwan and the US, Sonostar said, adding that it is scheduled to launch new versions of the smartwatch in different colors in August to enhance user experience.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to