Hitachi. Fujitsu. Sony. Seiko-Epson.

Not exactly small fry, are they?

And they are all working on a next-generation display technology called E Paper. E Paper promises to reduce power consumption by two to three orders of magnitude compared to conventional displays as E Paper only uses electricity when a pixel has to change. Yes, it means that the paper is non-volitale and will keep an image until it is erased.

Potential applications include "newspapers" where the pages are downloaded on the fly; billboards, computer displays, e-books - basically any kind of electronic display or anything that is currently printed.

While color e-paper has been demonstrated, it is likely that the first wide scale uses will monochrome as that technology is more mature.