Amazon Officially Acquires Liquavista

Amazon has officially acquired smart screen technology company Liquavista. The acquisition was confirmed by the company on Monday.

Previously owned by Samsung, the tech firm creates low-power color e-paper technology.

Samsung executives were believed to be looking for a quick sale since the company failed to live up to Samsung’s high expectations for its e-paper tech.

In a statement from Amazon, the e-commerce giant writes that it is “always looking for new technologies we may be able to incorporate into our products over the long term. The Liquavista team shares our passion for invention and is creating exciting new technologies with a lot of potential. It’s still early days, but we’re excited about the possibilities and we look forward to working with Liquavista to develop these displays.”

Liquavista is best known for its “electrowetting” technology, which is most often found in e-readers, mobile phones, GPS devices, cameras, and portable media players. Electrowetting is used in those devices because of its high level of visibility in all light conditions.

Liquavista has called its electrowetting process a highly scalable system that can ultimately be used in big-screen TVs, larger notebooks, and various other display-based devices.

Previous reports have pegged the deal at somewhere below the $100 million acquisition price.

Here’s a video of the Liquavista technology being explained:

Amazon and Liquavista have not made the terms of the deal known as this time. It is also unclear if the Liquavista team will join Amazon’s own developers or continue on course with projects that are currently in the works.

Do you think Amazon made the right decision in acquiring Liquavista?