E-Paper Trail: PVI Buys E Ink

Kindle e-paper supplier E Ink Monday was acquired for roughly $215 million by Prime View International, a Taiwanese display provider. Pending regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink calls itself the leading supplier of electronic paper display (EPD) technologies, such as e-paper display modules, that are used for consumer and industrial apps in handheld devices, e-books, e-newspapers, PC-accessories, public information displays and promotional signs.

The acquisition is an extension of a four-year partnership between E Ink and Prime View International (PVI). Following PVI's buy of Philips Electronics' e-paper business in 2005, the companies teamed up to provide displays for electronic books including the Sony Reader and Amazon.com's Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.

"The market for electronic-book devices such as the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle is forecast to grow from 1.1 million units in 2008 to 20 million units in 2012, a cumulative annual growth rate of 105 percent over the four-year period," said iSuppli analyst Vinita Jakhanwal.

And now you can add Google to the mix. The New York Times Monday said that the search engine giant will have an e-book retail program by the end of the year. Google already has 1.5 million public-domain books available for reading on mobile phones in addition to the Sony Reader, the paper reported.

E Ink said that its sales were $18 million in the first quarter of 2009, up a whopping 157 percent over the same quarter in 2008. Other products that contribute to E Ink sales include its Vizplex imaging film that is used in cell phones, signage, smart cards, memory devices and battery indicators.

In addition to the Sony 700 Reader and the Kindles, E Ink technology is used in Samsung's Alias 2 cell phone, with a changeable keypad made with E Ink Vizplex imaging film.

Tech giants Epson, LG Display, PolymerVision, Hewlett-Packard and Plastic Logic have also used Vizplex in demonstrations of flexible active-matrix displays. According to the company, IEEE Spectrum has ranked E Ink's patent portfolio as No. 3 worldwide for computer peripherals and storage.

PVI has also invested heavily in dedicated driver chips and touch screens for e-paper, as well as flexible displays, which will go to market later this year. In 2008, PVI bought a 74 percent stake in Korea-based Hydis Technologies, quadrupling capacity for the transistor backplanes used in e-paper.