E Ink's Chairman Blames Memory; Shelf Labels Stay on Plan

本文另有中文版：元太董事長：記憶體漲價拖累消費電子，貨架標籤照原指引成長

On Aug. 13, E Ink Holdings (元太科技), the Taiwanese maker of electronic paper displays, reported record first-half revenue, operating income and net income. On the same call, its chairman (李政昊) cut the company’s full-year revenue growth guidance to 10% to 15%. In May he had given 20% to 25%.

He blamed memory prices. The cut fell on consumer products. E Ink’s electronic shelf labels and digital signage kept their 20% to 25% growth forecast.

Amazon raised the price of five Kindle models in August, by 16% to 38.5%, and pointed to memory and storage costs. Yet the Kindle Scribe, which Gizmodo says carries more memory than the cheaper models, did not go up at all.

A note on terms. In TrendForce’s releases, “memory prices” covers both DRAM and NAND flash. The laptop cost pressure discussed below is mainly DRAM. The e-reader reports talk about RAM and storage capacity.

Consumer Devices Were Cut. Shelf Labels and Signage Were Not.

Two Taiwanese outlets covered the call, Economic Daily News (經濟日報) and TechNews (科技新報). They describe the consumer cut over different periods. Economic Daily News reported that consumer electronics applications, once expected to grow at a single-digit rate for the year, are now expected to shrink by double digits. TechNews reported that the chairman expects the consumer electronics business to fall by double digits in the third and fourth quarters.

His explanation, as TechNews relayed it, was that memory shortages and price increases had hit demand for readers and notebooks. Consumers on a budget, he said, were waiting for future models. E Ink’s own results statement, as quoted by Economic Daily News, said rising memory costs had slowed near-term demand growth for consumer applications.

The IoT business, which includes shelf labels and signage, kept its forecast. The chairman expects second-half growth to come from IoT. Not every product in it is going to plan, though. According to TechNews, he said 32-inch signs were priced too high and had not drawn the customer interest he expected. Signs of 8 to 15 inches got a better response. Economic Daily News reported that mid-size full-color advertising signage was running better than expected, with a high-single-digit full-year growth estimate. For the 32-inch signs, the reports give price as the reason and do not mention memory.

The Record Was for the First Half, Not the Second Quarter

The records E Ink reported were first-half figures. Taken alone, the second quarter was weaker on revenue and operating income. Reported results in NT$, from TechNews (Economic Daily News gives the same numbers, rounded):

Economic Daily News, summarizing the company’s statement, credited the first-half records to a steady e-paper business and to currency gains in non-operating income. Neither outlet gives a figure for those currency gains.

The guidance had a short life. According to TechNews, the chairman gave the 20% to 25% figure at the first-quarter call on May 8, and an internal review began about three weeks later. He expects third-quarter revenue to come in below the second quarter’s. Economic Daily News reported that he expects the year’s revenue peak in the fourth quarter. Even after the cut, the full-year guidance is for growth, not decline.

Kindle Prices Rose 16% to 38.5%; the Scribe Stayed Put

TechRadar reported that the new Kindle prices appeared over a weekend without an announcement. Fortune found them first and published a list.

List prices in US dollars, with percent changes calculated from the listed prices:

An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune that the company was “facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs”. The spokesperson added that Amazon had absorbed those increases for as long as it could before adjusting prices across its product lines. Neither Gizmodo nor TechRadar reports a cost breakdown by product. Gizmodo put the average increase at about 28%.

TechRadar wrote that the Scribe is the only Kindle without an increase. Gizmodo reported that both the Scribe and the Scribe Colorsoft held their starting prices, and that both carry more memory than the lower-end Kindles.

Gizmodo’s reading of the list is that Amazon is not setting increases by the amount of RAM alone. Its example was the Colorsoft’s 16% against 38.5% for Kindle Kids. Amazon’s statement does not say why the increases differ.

In Laptops, Too, TrendForce Sees the Slowdown on the Consumer Side

TrendForce publishes forecasts, not results. Its forecasts for 2026 global notebook shipments, year over year:

In March, TrendForce described a “negative feedback loop between pricing and demand”. Tight memory supply raised system costs, brands were pushed to raise retail prices, and higher prices weakened consumer demand.

The July forecast is a slightly smaller decline than March’s. The release says first-half shipments beat expectations because CPU supply improved and brands brought purchases forward. TrendForce said that pulled part of second-half demand into the first half.

The July release places the slowdown with consumers. Buyers of entry-level and mainstream models have become more price-sensitive, and consumers are stretching their laptop replacement cycles. Commercial and education demand, TrendForce wrote, was “insufficient to fully offset the slowdown in the consumer market”.

The same release said Apple has raised prices across its entire MacBook lineup. In TrendForce’s view, even premium brands now have to pass part of their rising costs on to consumers.

In the Chairman’s Account, Memory Is a Consumer-Products Problem, Not a Shelf-Label One

When E Ink and Amazon tied memory costs to a business decision, the products involved were consumer products. In the chairman’s account, memory prices are holding back e-readers and notebooks. E Ink’s commercial side, shelf labels and signage, kept its forecast and is where he expects second-half growth. Amazon used the same reason for its Kindle increases.

A memory cost story does not mean prices move with memory content. That is the point of Gizmodo’s reading of the Kindle list.

So E Ink this year is best read as two businesses: a consumer side under memory pressure, by the chairman’s account, and a commercial side whose forecast has not changed. Reading the Aug. 13 cut as a broad weakening in e-paper demand puts the problem in the wrong place.

Scope and Versions

E Ink’s numbers come in two kinds. The table shows reported first-half and second-quarter results. The full-year guidance, the business-line outlooks and the third- and fourth-quarter expectations are all statements made on the Aug. 13 call. Linking the consumer cut to memory prices is the chairman’s and the company’s own explanation, and the reports do not say how much of the cut memory accounts for. Quotes and descriptions from Economic Daily News and TechNews are translated from Chinese.

The sources do not say whether Kindles use E Ink panels, so E Ink’s guidance and Amazon’s prices are two signals from the same market and should not be read as a supply-chain link. Kobo also raised US prices in May. The enthusiast blog The eBook Reader listed the Libra Colour up $30, to $259.99, and the Clara BW and Clara Colour up $20 each, to $159.99 and $179.99. It gave no reason, so the Kobo increases are not counted here as a memory signal.

TrendForce’s numbers are shipment forecasts, not price forecasts, and each release names factors beyond memory. The -9.2% figure appears only as the starting point of the March revision.

Part one of this series looked at the data center end of the memory market, where the evidence concerned orders and capacity allocation. This part looks at the consumer end, where the evidence concerns price lists and guidance. The two sets of evidence come from different product layers. They sit side by side here and are not joined into one causal chain. Who ends up paying for higher memory costs is not visible in any of these sources.

This article summarizes published statistics, press releases and news reports, with forecasts labeled apart from reported figures. It is not investment advice.