iRiver will soon launch an eBook reader, in Japan only. It will be called the Libre, although it's not yet clear which brand will iRiver use. The reader has a 6" 800x600 E Ink display, is made by PVI, and it uses Foxit software. Data is loaded using USB or memory cards (no wireless).

iRiver hopes to be leading the eBook market in Japan, just like it did in the MP3 players way back. They will sell it online only, and hope to reach 1,000 units sold per month.

TechOn reports that they will sell it for around 300$, saying that PVI sells it for around 150-200$.

News article can be collected by the Foxit software crawler, and PDF files can be read, too. iRiver are in talks with newspaper companies and other content providers.

Boston.com reports that some E Ink investors are not happy with PVI's acquisition. It turns out that they think that E Ink is worth much more than 215M$... E Ink sales are growing fast - they are projected to reach 110M$ in sales in 2009.

Prime View International (PVI) announced that it will acquire E Ink for 215M$. PVI is actually the world's highest volume supplier of ePaper display modules.

This is interesting news. On one hand it might prove useful as we'll have one company that has the E Ink IP and technology, and also manufacturers the displays. On the other hand it might push other display makers into competitive technologies.

Financially speaking, it's probably a disappointed for investors who have given 150M$ to E Ink over the years. Not a very good return on investment...

As part of the release, we learned the E Ink had 18M$ in sales in 1Q 2009, an impressive number.