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Quite the interesting times for the epaper companies that all initially rolled out of Phillips.
Polymer Vision goes through Bankruptcy (thanks to a giant ponzi scheme its major backer was involved in in the UK/Europe) literally on the verge of beginning sales of the Readius. Quite literally they had produced over a thousand units in batch runs ramping up to full production and had a final batch that was actually ready for sale when everything stopped. Now they have been purchased by Wistron and are preparing to go to market with a sort of new and improved Readius 2 in about 8 months.
E-Ink has become the defacto standard for EPD screens since they have a huge initial market penetration advantage. Of course now they have been purchased by PVI so their financing is more secure and they can more effectively and quickly move forward with e-ink epaper development.
Now Irex is in financial trouble and will most likely be bought by someone. They have a good amount of IP and Knowledge concerning e-ink as used in actual devices etc and I would think that would lend them to being purchased by a larger company but left somewhat intact as has happened with PolymerVision and E-ink. With a bit of tinkering, debt restructuring and FOCUS they might be able to overcome this and re-emerge as a leader in the field.
I wonder if a company like Onyx is capitalized enough for such a purchase. They have history since one of the people who started Onyx actually worked for Irex. More likely it would be a larger manufacturing company as with the others. Maybe someone like LG would take them in...only there they would more likely be absorbed into the company as a whole instead of kept as a subsidiary.
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