E Ink to Be Acquired by Prime View International
By Jennifer Colegrove, Director of Display Technologies, DisplaySearch
Blogging Live from SID Display Week!
E Ink and PVI announced today that PVI has signed an agreement to acquire E Ink for $215M. The deal is scheduled be closed in Q4′09. This confirms rumors that have been circulating in the industry for the past few weeks.
E Ink provides electrophoretic film material, while PVI manufactures a-Si backplanes and supplies completed display modules to Amazon, Sony and other e-book suppliers.
After being acquired by PVI, E Ink will still do business with other TFT suppliers, such as LG Display, Plastic Logic, Polymer Vision and others.
PVI and E Ink have been working together since 2005. PVI licensed technology from Philips to produce flexible ePaper displays. We can expect flexible electrophoretic active matrix displays in the market by the end of this year. E Ink is also aiming to mass-produce color products by 2010; they will be demonstrating color ePaper displays at SID this week.
Being acquired by PVI gives E Ink access to resources-both financial and expertise-to meet the demand for its products. The last time E Ink raised funds was in 2007.
DisplaySearch forecasts that the market for ePaper display modules will pass $3 billion by 2013. This market will see further growth with the emergence of color displays and flexible displays, serving the eBook, eTextbook, eNewspaper, eMagazine, and eDocument markets. Currently, electrophoretic display technology has more than 90% market share in ePaper displays, and E Ink is the #1 supplier of electrophoretic materials.
Would be good to mention that Prime View’s parent company is YFY, a paper company. Clearly this was their plan all along….
This rumor has been going around in the industry, and Taiwan for a while. PVI’s stock price in TSE (Taiwan Stock Exchange) raised by 100% from May to June due to this rumor. Before May it’s TWD 20 per share,
On June 1st, it’s closed as TWD40. So 100% growth within a month…..the power of wisper….
Funny how a company’s stock rises on the rumor of it buying another company… usually it’s the other way around!
Nowadays most of the tech stuff we use to know last month are so obsolete in current month. Gees …
Nowadays everything is starting witn and “I” or “E”.
You got that right John. And sure when it’s not with I and E it’s with “F”.