Freescale develops faster, cheaper chips for e-readers

You may soon find e-readers priced below $150 in stores later this year, or so Freescale says. Amazon and Sony both use Freescale’s chips in their e-readers. The current technology requires several chips to control the e-ink display, which bumps up the cost and reduces performance but that will soon change when Freescale begins to rollout their new single-chip technology that is much cheaper and allows faster page turns (less than half a second). Freescale has also eliminated features that are not used in e-readers from the chip. That brings down the cost by about $30. Freescale will be offering these new chips as samples to their customers like Amazon and Sony soon. It usually takes about six months from sampling a chip to a finished product going on sale, said Glen Burchers, a marketing director. If e-readers really reach the price point of $150 and gets improved performance, then consumers wouldn’t have to contemplate between having a tablet, or an e-reader.

Read [Bloomberg]