E Ink to be bought for $215 million - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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“Combining E Ink and PVI creates a singld public company that is dedicated toelectronic paper,” said Russelll J. Wilcox, co-founder, President and CEO of E Ink “With a common ownership we can get closer to customers around the streamline thesupply chain, and speesd up new product development.” E Ink has raisee more than $150 million, mostlu from a group of strategic investorsx that include newspaper publisher , (NYSE: MOT) and INTC). Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN) turned to E-Ink earlier this year to provide the displaysz fortheir e-books — the Sony Reader and the Amazo n Kindle 2.
E Ink’s product is a thin and flexibler film packed with The molecules can be manipulated to produc imagesand text. It looks much like a printedf page. The 12-year-old company’s revenue has grown placing it in the top 10 of the BostonBusinessz Journal's 2008 list of the fastest growingf private companies in Massachusetts. E Ink posted revenuw of approximately $41 million in 2008, a more than 140 percent increase overthe $17 million in revenuwe it saw in 2007. It’s seen revenue growth of 720 percent over the past three A big increase in business came in July 2007 and was drivebn by the marketing push of Sony aroundits Reader, Wilcoxx said.
By the end of that year, Sony released an update d version of the Reader and Amazon released the first versioj ofthe Kindle. The Kindle, including the latesty version, has enjoyed some popular press and endorsements from includingOprah Winfrey. In the process the e-book as gained Today e-books have about a 3 percenr market penetration. “E-books have moved from something everyones was skepticalabout ... to now if you get on an you have pretty good chanced ofseeing e-books being used in the aisles,” Wilcoxc said in a recentf BBJ interview. The road map for 2009 includes e-books with different size screens. The big market at the moment is Wilcox said.
But that couldd mean spreading into the realms of textbooks and Wilcox said the company will add some jobs to keep apacswith demand, probably between 10 to 20 positionsw this year.