Kindle: The Final Chapter

By The Business Insider Editors

Two previous posts here have discussed the business potential for the Kindle. For the last post on this phenomenal new device, we discuss what's happened to its core technology.

But before we do so, we thought it worth a yuk-yuk to mention that the future of electronic publishing was discussed last week in New York at a bookseller's fair, where The New York Times reported that author Sherman Alexie saw a woman on an airplane reading on a Kindle and said, "I wanted to hit her." ( Alexie subsequently said he'd meet with Amazon folks to learn more about the "machine" and promised not to hit anyone.

In a previous post, the commenter Mike had mentioned that the Kindle didn't have color capabilities. Well, needless to say the need for it was not lost on the E Ink people, who created this amazing display technology and have licensed it to a number of companies, including Sony for its e-book reader and Samsung for its smartphones. But E Ink needed a capital infusion, and it went wanting from U.S. investors.

 

Thinking Big in Taiwan: The 101 Tower in Taipei

But Prime View International, a Taiwanese company, saw the potential value of E Ink and has acquired the Cambridge, Massachusetts company for $215 million. We think that's a steal. "We commercialize advanced technologies," is PVI's motto.

Hey, Prime View, you rock.

We may be seeing the renaissance of Taiwan as a prime-time player in high tech. Two Taiwan PC manufacturers, Asusus and Acer, have a commanding share of the netbook market, and Taiwan is still a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. 

Here's the takeaway for those of you in business or technical writing: e-books will surely become the most efficient and economical way of "publishing" in the future. Forrester Research is leading the way in explaining this. Yesterday is a good time to begin exploring and understanding the benefits of this technology.

The Business Insider Editors

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We may be seeing the renaissance of Taiwan as a prime-time player in high tech. Two Taiwan PC manufacturers, Asusus and Acer, have a commanding share of the netbook market, and Taiwan is still a leader in semiconductor manufacturing.