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.
