Taiwan Firm Positioned for E-Reader Takeoff
With the market for electronic book readers set to take off, things are looking up for a little-known Taiwanese company that will probably supply most of the “e-paper” they use.
The company, Prime View International, said this summer that it would pay about $215 million to acquire E-Ink, which owns the technology for displaying text in the most popular readers, including Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.
...DisplaySearch, a market researcher based in Austin, Texas, forecasts the global market for e-paper, including e-paper used in e-books, to hit $5.9 billion by 2015, from $400 million this year.
...It was also a good fit considering Prime View’s pedigree. The company is a subsidiary of Yuen Foong Yu Group, a Taiwanese paper and pulp company. The group started making toilet paper and paperboard as early as 1939 and began producing coated paper in the 1950s with Japanese technology, according to its Web site.
While eBooks in the future may not be in the form we've imagined, however e-paper that only consumes power when switching colors (only black/white for now) will eventually take off to replace a certain share of "permanent" paper usage. PVI may not be the last standing, but its mother company indeed has the money and the position to give it a try. I am giving it an optimistic eye.
也許將來的電子書不一定是我們現在看到或想像的樣子（類似平板電腦的造型），但只在轉換顏色（目前僅有黑白）時才耗電的電子紙（e-paper或e-ink）遲早會起飛，取代今天部分紙張長時間、高價值顯示的用途。
在電子紙的發展和競爭過程中，元太科技（PVI）不一定是最後的贏家，因為其他廠商的技術、資金等門檻相對不算太高，但它的母公司永豐餘應該算是比較有錢、而且也比較順利成章的來涉足這個領域。
撇開資金、併購、政治這些「非產品」、「非技術」的面向不談，我對電子紙這個產業的遠景和產值是樂觀的；過一陣子再來看我想的對不對。:)
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