Samsung Want To Sell Liquavista To Amazon 18
Nate the greatest writes "Bloomberg is reporting early this morning that Liquavista, Samsung's cutting edge electrowetting screen tech research firm, is up for sale. Details are still thin but Bloomberg's unnamed source indicates Amazon is looking to buy Liquavista for somewhere under $100 million. This rumor confirms earlier reports that Amazon had launched a new holding company in the Netherlands and was going to use it to buy Liquavista. There have also been rumors circulating screen tech conferences for the past 5 or 6 months that Samsung was interested in selling the company. No one in the industry really understands why Samsung would want to do that, but I think the latest demo video from Liquavista explains it. This screen tech simply isn't as good as current LCD or OLED screens, and Samsung might be looking to cut their losses."
But for want of "Wants" (Score:4)
Seriously.
Why Amazon (Score:3)
Samsung, one of the (if not THE) leaders in display manufacturing technology, could not find a profitable way to make these things. And now Amazon - an internet ecommerce website that has zero manufacturing experience or capacity - wants to see if it can do any better?
Re: (Score:1)
Samsung, one of the (if not THE) leaders in display manufacturing technology, could not find a profitable way to make these things. And now Amazon - an internet ecommerce website that has zero manufacturing experience or capacity - wants to see if it can do any better?
Perhaps Amazon is one of the only clients of this firm. After all the type of displays they make are ereader displays. It would cut Amazon's overhead by having their own manufacturing and give Samsung capital to hire more lawyers.
Re: (Score:3)
It's funny that the Liquavista website [liquavista.com] has a prominent headline on the front page declaring their acquisition by Samsung... dated January 2011. If they can't keep their public face on the web cleared of old cruft I would be concerned about the rest of the company's internals.
Re:Why Amazon (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're a samsung manufacturer, samsung will handle the PR and marketing. And why bother when you have nothing to sell?
Re:Why Amazon (Hardware Envy) (Score:2)
All the other hulking giants, (Microsoft, Amazon, Sony, Google) want that kind of reach. Even wannabe failing giants (Barns and Nobel) thought that hardware would be their salvation.
Hardware domination is, for want of a better word, hard. Even companies with good track records with hardware products like Nokia and Sony have failed. IBM has gotten out of the hardware business to a large extent, except for mainframes and supercomputing. HP is toast
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of promise in the tech (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the big issues with LCD displays is that they block most of the light going through them; so they are inherently inefficient. The first polarizer blocks 50% right of the bat, and by the time you are done, a color LCD screen showing its brightest white is still blocking probably 85% of the light from the backlight. Electrowetting displays promise to let some 80% of the light through for b/w, and quite a bit more than LCDs for color. For example, 3D shutter glasses currently use LCD displays and they block 60% of the light, electrowetting displays would be far better.
You know, if they existed.
The display doesn't look bad at all (Score:2)
I think what's going on here is a need for quick cash. It doesn't make sense to me otherwise.
The display looks very good. I don't think amazon is the only market. I'll easily take a slightly poorer display to fantastic battery life. It seems to me it would knock eink out of the market. I also don't see why amazon would invest in something like this. Much easier to sign an exclusive ten year deal and cheaper. I don't see them having the resources and talent to continuously perfect the display tech. It would
This display technology is better than LCD (Score:2)