Russell J. Wilcox, president and CEO of Cambridge, MA based E Ink says the image quality and size of e-paper devices will reach a level that will meet application requirements for magazines by 2009. In an interview with BtoBonline.com Wilcox noted:

Currently, you can see e-paper being used in trade paperbacks. It's a small portion of the retail world, like the Internet was at first. There's speculation that Amazon will come out with a device. By next year there will be more than 10 companies selling electronic book readers. All of these are monochrome and around six inches wide. Next year you'll also see bigger sizes, like eight-inch and 10-inch screen sizes, and by 2009 you'll see 11- and 12-inch screen sizes. As they get bigger and bigger, they get to be a more and more appropriate way for magazine publishers to publish. The order for us is books, newspapers, magazines. Once we get beautiful color and images, we'll go into the magazine world. That'll be a year or two.

Currently all commercially available e-paper devices are monochrome and have a limited display size. And come with a whopping price tag. The Sony Reader debuted last year with a street price of $349.