COLOUR electronic paper from Fujitsu should be on the market in 18 months, it announced last week at the opening of the Asia-Pacific Digital Media Centre of Excellence in Melbourne.

Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand chief executive Rod Vawdrey said the next major wave in technology would be the proliferation of digital media.

“If you stretch your mind far enough you can get to the theory that in the future the newspapers will have moving pictures, and electronic paper certainly has the potential to enable that,” he said.

Mr Vawdrey said Fujitsu had some prototypes of its electronic paper, which would become commercially available in 2007.

Pilot projects would be conducted and then it would come out “in various forms, maybe A4 signage or large poster-wall or even wall displays”.

The price would eventually fall so it could replace “practically any form of signage or paper-based documents, even potentially shelf labels”, he said.

The new centre displays emerging digital media systems, from digital kiosks and dynamic point-of-sale displays to transport information systems and corporate communications systems.

Mr Vawdrey said digital media technology would change the way organisations targeted, and communicated with, customers.

“Fujitsu’s digital media systems enable companies to connect with customers at the point of sale to offer targeted promotions and information that can influence their buying decision,” he said.

“Content can be tailored for each location and presented via a range of intelligent display devices, including interactive kiosks, television screens, dynamic signage, mobile phones and even radio frequency identification trolleys being developed for our leading supermarkets.”

Melbourne was a logical place for the centre, which would offer a number of systems using digital media, he said.

The centre would initially have seven or eight staff, “growing pretty quickly to 15 and then scaling based on need”, he said.

“They will all be people who can design, develop and set up digital media networks and we’ll demonstrate some of the applications,” he said.

Victorian information and communication technology minister Marsha Thomson said the emerging digital media market was expected to grow to $US2 billion ($2.7 billion) by 2007-08.

Source: AustralianIT