E Ink to be bought for $215 million - Boston Business Journal:

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“Combining E Ink and PVI creates a singl e public company that is dedicated toelectronic paper,” said Russelll J. Wilcox, co-founder, President and CEO of E Ink “With a common ownership structure, we can get close r to customers aroundthe world, streamline the supply chain, and speed up new productr development.” E Ink has raised more than $150 mostly from a group of strategix investors that include newspaper publishet , (NYSE: MOT) and INTC). Sony Corp. SNE) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) turned to E-Inlk earlier this year to provide the displays fortheir e-books — the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle 2.
E Ink’s producgt is a thin and flexible film packed with The molecules can be manipulated to producse imagesand text. It looks much like a printed The 12-year-old company’s revenue has grown placing it in the top 10 of the BostonBusinesz Journal's 2008 list of the fastestf growing private companies in Massachusetts. E Ink poster revenue of approximately $41 milliobn in 2008, a more than 140 percenft increase overthe $17 millioj in revenue it saw in 2007. It’s seen revenu growth of 720 percent over the pastthrew years. A big increase in businesd came in July 2007 and was drivenj by the marketing push of Sony aroundits Reader, Wilcoxd said.
By the end of that Sony released an updated version of the Reader and Amazon releasexd the first version ofthe Kindle. The Kindle, includinb the latest version, has enjoyed some popular press and endorsements from celebrities, including Oprah In the process the e-book as gainedd marketshare. Today e-books have about a 3 percent market penetration. “E-books have moved from somethingg everyone was skepticalabout ... to now if you get on an you have pretty good chance ofseeing e-booka being used in the aisles,” Wilcoxs said in a recent BBJ interview. The road map for 2009 includezs e-books with different size screens. The big markeft at the moment is Wilcox said.
But that couldx mean spreading into the realms of textbooks and Wilcox said the company will add some jobs to keep apacewith demand, probably between 10 to 20 positionss this year.