Founded in 2006, Liquavista was a Dutch company that many believe was a spin-off of Phillips. It used electrowetting technology (running an electric current through a liquid) to develop display screens that use less battery power. These screens could work with or without a backlight and were still in the research and development phase when the company was acquired by Samsung Electronics Co. in 2010.

In 2013, Amazon started focusing more on its gadgets. The success of Kindle prompted Amazon to start focusing on other devices such as smartphones. Because of this, later in the year Amazon acquired Liquavista from Samsung Electronics to develop new displays for its upcoming mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, GPS devices, cameras, and portable media players.

The price of the acquisition was never accurately revealed.

Despite the promising acquisition, in 2013 Amazon representatives revealed that Liquavista was no longer operational. The R&D work for Liquavista was shifted to other units.

The motivation behind founding Liquavista was to solve the issue of low battery life that devices faced. Back in the day, it was a huge problem for smartphone makers and this is why Samsung had been eager to buy the company. However, when Amazon acquired it, the issues associated with mobile battery life had largely been solved as battery lives were improving each year and screens were getting more energy efficient. This reduced the market need for Liquavista’s technology that never really materialized.

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References

• ‍Reuters
• The Digital Reader