14 DAY TRIAL // Though some companies have been doing worse, Samsung has been going through some less than wonderful business changes as well, and while its overall status is still good, there are some minor annoyances to deal with.
One of them, which many people might not have known about if rumors didn't sprout out about it, has to do with e-ink display manufacture.
Indeed, though it isn't all that well known, Samsung actually does have a small business arm that makes e-ink displays.
Said manufacturer bears the name of Liqavista and is a Dutch company that Samsung is probably wishing it hadn't bought.
Engadget outright says that a Samsung spokesperson expressed the company's dissatisfaction with how the initial acquisition of Liqavista didn't lead to the results it had looked forward to.
Then again, with E Ink corporation basically establishing a monopoly on e-paper development and shipments, Liqavista wasn't about to amount to much, if anything.
Thus, Samsung seeks to make a deal with Amazon, through which the latter would take the e-ink display maker off its hands.
The acquisition would happen for less than $100 million / 77.52-100 million Euro.
Obviously, Amazon would then use the research and technology for its next-generation Kindle e-book readers, and maybe even monochrome tablets.
Samsung had vision for e-ink devices that weren't e-readers, but that future is probable gone now. OLED, AMOLED and, of course, LCDs continue to arrest the majority of display R&D funding.
The occasional smartwatch, small data pads or other portable electronics may crop up from time to time, regardless of whether the Samsung-Amazon deal goes through or not, but Amazon may be more inclined to invest attention and time into e-ink than Samsung.
It's either that or the dissolution of Liqavista, which we doubt anyone wants now that we've gone a couple of months without some new, mega wave of job cuts being announced.