Polymer Vision, the Southampton, England, company that was making a connected ereader whose screen can fold up has, well, folded, ThisIsHampshire reports (via J.co.uk).
The company was first spun out of Southampton University but later bought by a Dutch consortium involving Philips, hoping to make Readius, a SIM-enabled ereader with a flexible, roll-up display.
The company was marketing the device at the 2007 Mobile World Congress (here’s their video demo to me at the exhibition), with plans for a 2008 launch, but the company has been in stasis since then after failing to find new financing.
It’s fair to say the first iteration of Readius was always going to be a mere stepping stone on the way to full-fledged e-paper, rather than a destination in itself Polymer Vision CEO Karl McGoldrick is still keen: “Replacing glass-based displays as the dominant display option for mobile devices is no simple challenge, but that is what Polymer Vision is going to do.”