Amazon.com buys electrowetting display maker Liquavista from Samsung

US online retail giant Amazon.com Inc yesterday said that it had acquired "electrowetting" display maker Liquavista NV from Samsung Electronics Co in order to help it develop new displays for mobile devices.

Amazon.com did not reveal the financial terms of the transaction, but Bloomberg had earlier reported that Samsung, which had acquired Netherlands-based Liquavista in early 2011 for an undisclosed sum, was seeking around $100 million from the sale.

Founded in 2006 as a spin-out from the Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, Liquavista, is developing a new type of electronic display technology called ''electrowetting.''

Electrowetting has the potential to create bright and colourful images that have excellent indoor and outdoor readability while using lower battery power than traditional displays.

The performance of the electrowetting technology makes it well suited for use in mobile applications such as e-readers, mobile phones, GPS devices, portable media players and cameras because of the ability to see displays in all lighting conditions combined with the ability to show video content at very low power.

Seattle-based Amazon leads in the e-reader market through its range of Kindle Fire tablets that compete with Apple's iPad, Google's and Samsung tablet PC's.