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January 03, 2007
Big Bet On Flexible Displays Startup
Plastic Logic, a 7 year old UK company that aims to manufacture flexibe displays, has raised $100M in venture finance in a round that is still open to new invetors. The $100M first closing was led by two US-based investors, Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation, neither of which is investing for the first time in a European venture.
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We have not seen this amount of money go into a startup at this stage for years, although it is worth noting that deals in the semiconductor sector have been getting bigger in recent months, e.g. Icera Semiconductor and a couple of other semiconductors deals. (The ability to amass larger amounts of capital is mainly driven by the augmenting effect of the return of US-based and to some extent Japanese investors to Europe.)
We asked Plastic Logic if it has a design-in win with a display manufacturer in order to get a view on how long it will be before we see such devices on the market? The answer surprised us, as we thought the firm's business
plan was to supply backplane tech as a component -- taking the more established route of convincing the mainly East Asian display manufacturers to adopt its technology, manufacture the modules, and systems, enabling it to make money via licensing and royalty revenues.
We ARE the display manufacturer. We are working with potential partners to build the supply chains necessary to get these products to market (including content, electronics assemble and channel/brand) but all options are still open.
It is currently hiring a product design team and the first units are expected to be coming off a new production line being built in Dresden by 2008, according to the firm's website.
It is a bold move for a company out of Europe. There have been few new big names to emerge in the computing and displays sector in many years. And established companies are shrinking, getting acquired, or spinning off units, or changing their focus - think of recent corporate activities of Thomson, Phillips, and Siemens.
In Plastic Logic's favour in light of the aforementioned firms' trajectories is that the economics of plastic electronics -- if the manufacturer gets it right -- is in theory good enough to enable upstarts to compete with established display manufacturers in countries with lower cost bases and deep-pocketed parent companies.
The materials part of the supply chain is in place, we believe. And there are several companies supplying the fab manufacturing equipment required. There is local know-how and skilled technologists to tap - as the European Commission has put quite a bit of R&D money into the field, as well as VCs and large industrial giants who have invested in other organic semiconductor startups.
There also have been a few recent flops in trying to get newfangled displays technologies out of the labs over here for the company to learn from.
Press Release From Plastic Logic
Posted on January 3, 2007 01:49 PM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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