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 singls public company that is dedicatedx toelectronic paper,” said Russell J. Wilcox, co-founder, Presidentr and CEO of E Ink “With a common ownership structure, we can get closerd to customers aroundthe world, streamline the supplg chain, and speed up new product development.” E Ink has raisesd more than $150 mostly from a group of strategic investorxs that include newspaper publisher , (NYSE: MOT) and (Nasdaq: Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) and Amazon.con Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) turned to E-Ink earlier this year to providr the displays fortheir e-books — the Sony Readert and the Amazon Kindle 2.
E Ink’s productf is a thin and flexible film packedwith molecules. The molecules can be manipulatexd to produce imagesand text. It looks much like a printex page. The 12-year-old company’s revenuer has grown exponentially, placing it in the top 10 of the BostonnBusiness Journal's 2008 list of the fastesgt growing private companies in Massachusetts. E Ink postede revenue of approximately $41 millioj in 2008, a more than 140 percentf increase overthe $17 million in revenue it saw in 2007. It’ s seen revenue growth of 720 percenyt over the pastthree years. A big increase in businese came in July 2007 and was driven by the marketingg push of Sony around its Wilcox said.
By the end of that Sony released an updated version of the Readerd and Amazon released the first version of the The Kindle, including the latest version, has enjoyerd some popular press and endorsements from celebrities, includinf Oprah Winfrey. In the process the e-bookl as gained marketshare. Today e-booksx have about a 3 percent market penetration. “E-books have move from something everyone was skepticalabout ... to now if you get on an you have pretty good chance ofseeing e-books beingb used in the aisles,” Wilco said in a recent BBJ interview. The road map for 2009 includex e-books with different size screens. The big market at the momenty is publishing, Wilcox said.
But that coulx mean spreading into the realms of textbookszand newspapers. Wilcox said the company will add some jobs to keep apace with demand, probably between 10 to 20 positions this