New Freescale Chip Could Birth a $150 E-Reader

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A new faster processor from chip maker Freescale could help cut down the cost of components for e-readers and introduce a $150 device later this year.

Freescale’s latest system-on-chip, called the i.MX508 , integrates an ARM Cortex A8 processor with a display controller from E Ink and promises twice the performance at a significantly lower cost.

“This is the first chip that has been designed just for e-readers,” says Glen Burchers, director of marketing at Freescale told Wired.com. “Earlier, we had general purpose processors being used in e-readers so they were not completely optimized.”

From the Kindle to the Sony Reader, Freescale’s chips power most e-readers today. The chip maker claims to have nearly 90 percent of the market share among e-readers. Research firm Forrester estimates 3 million e-readers were sold last year and sales are expected to double this year.

But the high cost of an e-reader has kept many consumers from rushing to stores to get the device. An Amazon Kindle costs $260 while the cheapest e-reader from Sony is still $200. And that doesn’t include the price of buying e-books. Another limiting factor has been the user interface and lag in page turn, which has turned off some potential users.

Freescale’s latest chip has an ARM core running at 800 MHz and can render electronic ink pages at almost twice the speed of earlier e-reader processors, says the company. This results in faster page turns and a more snappy feel to the device.

“Today page flips on a Kindle are in the range of 1.5 to 2 seconds, while the Nook (which uses a processor from Samsung) it can take up to 3 seconds for a page turn,” says Burchers. “With our new processors that can be cut down to about half a second.”

The increased processing capability also gives e-reader makers greater computing power so they can add better touch capability and run more apps on the device, says Freescale.

For consumers, all this could come with some cost savings. Freescale’s chip could reduce overall bill of components because the chip itself will cost just about $10 when ordered in large volumes (greater than 250,000 units). Overall, this could reduce the price of an e-reader by at least $30-$50. The most expensive component in an e-reader, however, remains the E Ink black-and-white display.

E-readers based on the new Freescale processor are expected to be available in the third quarter of the year.

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