On August 27, 2026, the 4th ePaper Industry Innovation Conference (ePIC 2026) concluded successfully at the Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center (Bao'an), held during IOTE 2026. As the annual flagship innovation event of the ePaper industry, the conference gathered core member companies of the ePaper Industry Alliance, including E Ink, BOE, XingTai Technology, TCL CSOT, Hanshow, iFLYTEK Readboy, ZKONG, DKE, Qingyue Technology, MVE, VusionGroup, NewFace and HKC, with more than 300 guests from home and abroad. International guests from the Italy Internet of Things Association, the Canada IoT Association and the AI industry in China's Taiwan region joined the organizers to review the year's innovations and to look ahead at industry trends.

If the keyword of previous editions was "breakthroughs from zero to one", the keyword of this edition has become "the formation of new tracks". Full color is no longer a technology demonstration but a mainstream exhibit; first-of-their-kind products no longer appear sporadically but emerge in clusters; and AI is no longer a conceptual garnish but a standard feature. Based on on-site observations and on a systematic analysis of 67 global ePaper "first" products released between 2007 and 2026, this article outlines five trends now unfolding across the global ePaper industry.

The main forum of the 4th ePaper Industry Innovation Conference (ePIC 2026).

Trend One: The full-color track has been established — ePaper has formally entered the full-color era

Walking into the 1,200 sqm ePaper zone in Hall 11 of IOTE 2026, the most immediate impression is that the protagonist on the booth has changed. Full-color ePaper has become the flagship exhibit for a wide range of manufacturers — large-size full-color commercial signage, full-color ePaper digital photo frames, full-color color-changing decorative walls, full-color badges, full-color wireless microphones and AI instant cameras were all showcased together, spanning three size segments: 13.3–75 inch commercial displays, 7.09–31.5 inch photo frames and 1.69–7.09 inch 3C digital devices. Full-color ePaper is no longer a laboratory technology demonstration but a clearly defined track with a complete product matrix.

Some of the exhibitors in the 1,200 sqm ePaper zone.

This track even earned its own dedicated topic at the conference — the Full-Color ePaper Image Rendering Technology Seminar on August 26 took "what makes a color ePaper display look good" as its core proposition, bringing panel makers, solution providers, algorithm developers and application companies onto the same stage to discuss color reproduction and image rendering. The fact that a single technical sub-direction can support an independent professional seminar is itself a sign of a maturing track.

The Full-Color ePaper Image Rendering Technology Seminar: tackling "what makes color ePaper look good".

The data confirms this judgment. An analysis of the screen color structure of the 67 first-of-their-kind products shows that in the first twelve years from 2007 to 2018, all such products were black and white; the first color (three-color / four-color) products appeared in 2019; the first full-color products landed in 2020; and color-changing Prism arrived in 2024. By 2026, full color became the largest single color category of the year with 8 products, and color-family products (color + color-changing Prism + full color) totaled 13 units, accounting for 72.2% of the 18 first-of-their-kind products in 2026, while black-and-white products accounted for 27.8%.

The evolution of screen color structure among first-of-their-kind products.

Breakthroughs on the size dimension deserve particular emphasis. The available sizes of full-color ePaper have expanded from the early 6–13.3 inch reader specification to 25.3, 28.5, 31.5, 40.5 and even 75 inches, which means full-color ePaper has formally entered the main battlefield of commercial displays. Three product lines — digital photo frames (7.09–31.5 inch), color signage (13.3–75 inch) and 3C digital devices (1.69–7.09 inch) — run in parallel, forming a complete full-color product ecosystem spanning both consumer and commercial markets.

Trend Two: Innovation has entered a high-speed phase, with consumer (2C) products becoming the mainstream

If "first-of-their-kind products" are a thermometer for the industry's innovation vitality, that thermometer is heating up fast. In the twelve years from 2007 to 2018, only 5 first-of-their-kind ePaper products were launched worldwide, fewer than one per year on average — a classic industry germination period. From 2019 to 2022 came a period of steady growth with 3–4 products a year; 2023 to 2024 accelerated to 6 per year. The real turning point came in 2025, when first-of-their-kind products reached 17, and in 2026 they climbed further to 18, a record high.

The evolution of the number of global first-of-their-kind ePaper products, 2007–2026.

Two figures are enough to show the change in magnitude. First, 2025 and 2026 together contributed 35 first-of-their-kind products, or 52.2% of the 67 accumulated over 20 years — more than half of all industry firsts happened in the last two years. Second, the average number of firsts per year was 4.3 from 2018 to 2024, rising to 17.5 in 2025–2026, an acceleration of roughly 4.1 times. The ePaper industry has clearly entered a high-speed innovation phase.

A deeper structural change has taken place in the question of "for whom are we innovating". At the conference on August 27, 2026, 17 companies receiving the "First" award took the stage, and consumer product companies made up a considerable share — which is precisely where the trend lies.

The 2025–2026 ePaper Industry Innovation "First" Award ceremony, with 17 winning companies on stage.

The data shows that 2023–2024 was the historic crossover period between B2C and B2B: B2C reached 8 products (47.1%) in 2025 and 13 products in 2026, accounting for 72.2%, a record high. Cumulatively, among the 67 first-of-their-kind products, 32 were B2B and 35 were B2C (roughly 47.8% to 52.2%) — but nearly all of the incremental growth in the second half came from the consumer side.

The changing B2B/B2C structure of first-of-their-kind products.

The distribution of application fields echoes this structural shift. Consumer electronics became the largest application field with 22 products (32.8%), followed by smart office with 11 products (16.4%), the two together accounting for almost half of the total. From color-changing ePaper nail art, color-changing masks and full-color badges to full-color calendar photo frames, music phone stands and pocket oracle devices, ePaper is turning from a "display tool inside an industry" into a "trendy item in consumers' hands".

The application field distribution of the 67 first-of-their-kind products.

The technical root of this shift is that color-changing Prism and full-color technologies have given ePaper decorative and fashion attributes, giving it for the first time the "good looks" required for admission as a consumer product. When a display can be cut into any shape, present a full-color image and adhere to a product surface like a film, what it faces is no longer a procurement list but consumer aesthetics.

Trend Three: AI has become a preferred ingredient in first-of-their-kind ePaper products

At this year's conference, AI was not a single topic but the underlying tone throughout. At the main forum, the ePaper Insight intelligent supply chain platform for the ePaper industry was officially released, positioned as "an AI think tank, from data to decisions". Lingzhi Digital Technology of the Rainbow Group shared AI implementation at retail terminals in a talk titled "From Smart Price Tags to AI Decisions". E Ink set the technical direction with "empowering ePaper display boundaries through AI and technology iteration". And a day later, at the Hisense A10 E Ink phone launch, AI was likewise a core selling point.

Returning to the first-of-their-kind product data, the pace of AI penetration can be observed more precisely. This review classifies products uniformly by whether the product itself has AI capability: 12 of the 67 first-of-their-kind products are AI-enabled. iFLYTEK Readboy's AI ePaper writing tablet broke new ground in 2019, followed by Maike Innovation Technology's AI ePaper power bank in 2025, and by a burst of 10 in 2026 alone (such as Shenzhen Jianshan's AI Q&A card, Yantu Intelligent's AI instant camera, Wenxiantong and ultra-portable readers).

The penetration rhythm of AI as an ingredient.

What really deserves attention is not the share but the time distribution: over the six years from 2019 to 2024, only 1 of the 67 first-of-their-kind products carried AI, while 2025–2026 alone contributed 11 (10 of them in 2026). AI is turning from an "occasional functional highlight" into "the default option when launching something new".

This shift has an inevitability about it. The typical new ePaper categories — Q&A cards, instant cameras, writing tablets, Wenxiantong — are essentially combinations of "low-power paper-like display plus voice/image intelligence": AI handles understanding and generation, while ePaper handles eye-friendly and long-lasting display. The two are precisely complementary: large models need an interface that does not strain the eyes and does not drain the battery, while ePaper needs a layer of "smart" content capability to escape its positioning as a "static label". As the cost of calling large models continues to fall, "AI + ePaper" has moved from technical feasibility to product standard. It is reasonable to predict that after 2027, new ePaper consumer products without AI capability will find it increasingly hard to be called "innovative".

Trend Four: From "a screen" to "a surface" — a shift in application philosophy

If full color changes what ePaper displays, then color-changing Prism changes where ePaper attaches. At this year's conference, E Ink's presentation "Latest Developments and Mass Production Cases of Prism Color-Changing ePaper" systematically disclosed progress in moving color-changing ePaper from the laboratory to volume production, while the exhibit list in the zone was itself a declaration of a "surface revolution": Hisense color-changing refrigerators, full-color color-changing decorative walls, Prism color-changing handbags, the Prism 3 color electric guitar, full-color color-changing wheel hubs, ePaper color-changing nail art, color-changing masks and color-changing wall tiles.

Lu Yanxing of E Ink presenting "Latest Developments and Mass Production Cases of Prism Color-Changing ePaper".

What these items share is that ePaper is no longer "a screen embedded in a device" but "a skin draped over a product surface". It no longer competes with LCD and OLED on display parameters, but focuses on materials and industrial design, competing on the same stage as car paint, leather, textiles and building materials. This is a fundamental repositioning.

What supports this leap is the maturing of the technical route. Prism adopts a segment-type design whose core is pattern design rather than pixel driving, allowing arbitrary shapes to be cut to order and flexibly conformed to curved surfaces, without the need to develop a new TFT backplane for every product form — which greatly reduces the cost of "customizing a color-changing surface for a single product". According to currently public information, Prism 3 uses Spectra 6 film (operating temperature 0–50 degrees Celsius, full-screen refresh on the order of 20–30 seconds), while the next-generation Prism 4 will use Marquee film (wide operating temperature of -20 to 65 degrees Celsius, refresh in 6–7 seconds), giving the latter engineering feasibility for wide-temperature scenarios such as automotive and outdoor architecture.

Looking at the first-of-their-kind data, color-changing Prism products first appeared with 1 unit in 2024, surged to 5 in 2025 and held at 3 in 2026, for a cumulative total of 9. Given that this category is less than three years old, its growth rate is the steepest among all ePaper sub-directions. Automotive surfaces, beauty and wearables, architectural surfaces and home panels — each is a potential market worth tens of billions, and their common entry point is precisely this new philosophy of treating ePaper as a surface.

Trend Five: From "making products" to "building platforms" — underlying technologies enter a dense breakthrough period

Among the 67 first-of-their-kind products, one category of innovation is not aimed at end users yet determines the ceiling of the entire industry: technology platforms, 11 in total. They include Dasung Technology's 60 Hz ultra-high refresh technology, DKE's OTFT backplane flexible CoP module, Realtek's SoP+COG technology, Hanwang Technology's magnetic-capacitive two-in-one touch chip, Hefei Weijing Materials' UV conductive silver adhesive, Dawai Holdings' peak 80 frames-per-second refresh technology, Jinyatai's local special-effects refresh technology for full-color ePaper, Bo Chengxin's additive-printed FPC technology, and Mingzhan Information's product-level development platform for full-color ePaper.

From "making products" to "building technology platforms": technical innovation concentrates in the last two years.

These names span five links — driving, backplane, materials, processes and development tools — and their time distribution is even more telling: 9 of the 11 platform-level firsts are concentrated in 2025–2026, accounting for 81.8%. As terminal products surge in the consumer market, the upstream simultaneously enters a period of intensive construction of underlying capabilities — a typical feature of an industry moving from "application-layer innovation" to "systematic capability building".

The industrial significance of this trend is that ePaper innovation once depended heavily on film progress from a single upstream supplier, whereas today driver chips, flexible backplanes, conductive materials and printing processes are achieving breakthroughs at multiple points. The industry is moving from application-layer innovation toward systematic capability building. Combined with the more than 40 companies covering the full chain of "materials, chips, modules, complete machines and applications" exhibiting together in the 1,200 sqm zone, the underlying technology supply of the ePaper industry is becoming complete and diversified.

Conclusion: Three windows for 2027

Combining on-site observations with the data trajectory of the 67 first-of-their-kind products, three judgments can be made about 2027.

First, full-color ePaper applications are the core growth direction. Full-color ePaper has completed the leap from technology to product, and competition in 2027 will center on "looking good" — color reproduction, image rendering and content ecosystems. Whoever first turns full-color photo frames and full-color commercial displays into things users are willing to put in their living rooms and shopping malls will hold the ticket to the next stage.

Second, "AI + ePaper" will move from preferred to standard. Q&A cards, instant cameras and Wenxiantong have already validated the product paradigm of "large-model understanding and generation plus eye-friendly ePaper display". As the cost of calling large models continues to decline, AI will become a basic capability of new ePaper consumer products rather than a differentiating selling point.

Third, surface applications will see their first year of scale. The wide-temperature capability of Prism 4 opens up engineering feasibility for automotive and outdoor architecture. Once color-changing automotive surfaces enter OEM volume production, ePaper will gain a higher ceiling in the display industry — a market priced by "surface" rather than by "screen".

In twenty years, ePaper has grown from a black-and-white display on a reading device into a new material that can change color, display in full color, think, and adhere to almost any surface. What the 4th ePaper Industry Innovation Conference presented is not an annual summary of an industry, but the collective acceleration of an industry at a critical point. Innovation never stops, and the journey never ends.

The ePaper Industry Alliance (EPIA) was officially announced on April 28, 2021. Jointly initiated by three upstream companies in the ePaper industry chain — E Ink, BOE and XingTai Technology — it now comprises more than 270 companies, institutions and research units, and is dedicated to promoting the sustained innovation and healthy, orderly development of the ePaper industry.