Polymer Vision, a British developer of flexible display technology and the never-released Readius e-reader, has shut down. The company had hoped to challenge glass and stiff plastic displays, allowing readers to roll up the e-reader screen into a compact case when finished with a document. The device was touted as extremely light (115g), providing 30 hours of battery life for a five-inch greyscale screen, with 3G data connectivity and support for HTML, PDF, ePub and audio books.
Polymer Vision had been acquired by a subsidiary of Philips Electronics, which had promised to debut the device last Fall, having disclosed its plans as early as 2005. The company laid off its employees last Wednesday.
The technology will likely appear in other devices at some point in the future. Presumably, the assets will revert to Philips; they could also be sold to another company. Polymer Vision, however, has written its final line because it could not raise any more cash. Rival Plastic Logic, on the other hand, said it had raised additional investment, now totaling more than $200 million, last week.