What’s Happening at Pixel Qi – Mary Lou Jepsen’s Blog

Hi all, thanks for your comments. Since writing my last entry on Friday I’ve been back to the bay area from asia, and then flew to Texas for the SID Display Week conference www.sid.org. I keynoted this business conference this morning (Monday) and have been demoing the display most of the day. Please hang on for answers to your questions! I’ll try to put more pictures up soon, but attached is a high resolution one of the 3qi display compared to my kindle display.

Kindle and 3qi display with backlight off – side by side

- Mary Lou

By popular demand here is the first picture of our new screen. In the above picture, two 3qi screens are shown side-by-side: one of our screens is in full color saturation with its backlight on, the other of our screens is shown in its epaper mode with backlight off. These screens will be available this fall in netbooks and ebook readers. Size: 10.1″ diagonal.

Mary Lou

PS: I’ve had many requests for a peak at the 3qi screen outdoors: I took the snapshot below yesterday, on my iphone (sorry, it’s just not a great camera) outside in the hot tropical sun. The laptop is on top of a shrub. Apologies for the glare from the metal bezel of the screen; this will of course be covered up in a real product. Nonetheless, we think its a stunning screen.

more information at www.pixelqi.com

Yesterday I spoke at the Interactive Displays conference in San Jose, CA and announced that samples of our screens are due at the end of May/early June. These samples are being made in the ample spare capacity of one of the largest LCD manufacturers in the world – and thus can be moved into high volume mass production quickly – this fall really.

We are starting with a 10.1″ screen that can fit into a standard netbook laptop, and is driven in the same way. It’s plug, form, fit compatible – meaning one can unplug the existing screen in a 10″ netbook and plug our new screen right in.

These screens have a paper-white epaper look with very high resolution and contrast – and – video rate update to allow scrolling, looking at video clips and so forth. With the backlight on they sport full color saturation and video.

More details to follow in the coming weeks,
Mary Lou

Lots of people ask us if we are working on netbooks or ebooks.

The answer is: both.

We are making screens that are more readable than regular laptop screens, and our studies show they are as comfortable to read as electrophoretics in existing ebook readers. But these screens also update quickly, show video, are sunlight readable and (with the backlight on) show full color. In addition, our display screens integrate with touchscreens of many different varieties (an analyst I know is aware of over 200 different efforts by various companies in new and improved touchscreens).

We have now completed our first full round of funding (series-A) and are putting our full attention to getting our products completed and out to our customers.

- Mary Lou

It’s been a while since we updated.

We have been feverishly working on designing our first screen product We will be sampling our 10″ screens this spring and plan to be in high volume mass production this summer. These screens have an epaper state that rivals the best epaper on the market today. What’s different: unlike the other epaper products where one must wait a second or so to change the screen – we provide video rate refresh. Also, while we have a high resolution paper-white black and white, we also provide, in the same screen fully saturated color fidelity – the same as a standard laptop screen – same color, contrast resolution, field of view etc. Our screens consumer 25%-50% of the power of a regular notebook screen in their power savings modes and will be in available at comparable price points and volumes to standard LCD screens this summer. In addition, by integrating the screen with the electronics driving the screen a 5-fold increase in battery life between charges can be achieved.

It’s been a while since I posted here. During the fund raising process so much of what we were doing was necessarily secret. Also during this process the ideas that we have had began to mature into commercial product concepts that we also have to keep confidential to work most effectively with our partners.

We have opened two offices this fall: one in San Francisco and one in Taipei. We have completed a large tranche of hiring and have a truly extraordinary team on both sides of the Pacific with excellent partnerships beyond.

We signed a deal, yesterday – on Thanksgiving Day, that should cement the ability of Pixel Qi to deliver a compelling roadmap of products starting in 2009.

Nice Article in Business week today on wanting better screens:

a snippet below:

The Do-Good Imperative
Some of the most innovative ideas today are coming from efforts to address the needs of those most in need

by Janet A. Ginsburg

When I first read about the computer designed for the One Laptop Per Child project, I wanted one. Not because it was adorable, cheap, or a means of doing good. I coveted its screen, designed for use in full daylight. Even my Apple MacBook Pro, with all its clever tricks, can’t manage that. ……

Please take a look at the job descriptions at

We are searching for 5 positions
1) Director of Licensing
2) Regional Sales Director (Taiwan)
3) Senior Product Engineer
4) Senior Optics/Liquid Crystal Engineer
5) Director of Electronics Engineering

If interested please submit a cover letter and your resume to Casey Hsu (casey@pixelqi.com)