Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff

[DonaldL.]

Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff

With the market for electronic book readers set to take off, things are looking up for a little-known Taiwanese company that will probably supply most of the “e-paper” they use.

The company, Prime View International, said this summer that it would pay about $215 million to acquire E-Ink, which owns the technology for displaying text in the most popular readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.

Prime View, often referred to as P.V.I., recently sweetened its offer and says it hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. It already manufactures e-reader display modules for the Kindle and the Reader.

DisplaySearch, a market researcher based in Austin, Texas, forecasts the global market for e-paper, including e-paper used in e-books, to hit $5.9 billion by 2015, from $400 million this year.

[HarryT]

I wouldn't say that PVI is "little known" - certainly not by people who know anything about the eBook business. They manufacture the screens for all the eInk devices currently on the market - Amazon, Sony, and all the rest. They are an extremely "big player" in the game.

[fugazied]

So basically they want to own the intellectual property rights on the product they manufacture a lot of.

Could be a pretty interesting advancement for the technology if their manufacturing processes gave them some good ideas how to progress the technology.

[danbloom]

Jonathan Adams, who wrote that piece for the NY Times as a Taipei-based stringer, did a good job with that story.
It was a good follow to Michael Fiztgerald's piece last week in the Boston Globe Magazine, also about E-Ink in Boston .....and PVI.

As for PVI being "a little-known Taiwanese company", HarryT above is correct to say that PVI is a big player and well known inside the industry,..... yes,...... but for the Times story going out to average readers across the USA and Canada,....... it's true, I think.....most people have never heard of PVI and even fewer know it stands for Prime View International.

NOTE: I think the most important part of Jon's story the last part where he quotes the PVI PR guy who ....... "declined to comment on whether PVI might make its own dedicated e-reader someday."


My guess is PVI would not want to make an e-reader that would complete with e-readers of it own customers, so yeh, scratch that for now.