Technology, Component or System: Plastic Logic raises $100m

Alarm:Clock is reporting that Plastic Logic have raised a $100m round. They've taken the ambitious switch up from providing just the backplane (a few $10 in value) to the whole display (maybe $100) and are setting up a production line. This raises a general issue that crops up again and again with technology companies, do you license a pure technology, do you develop a component, or do you develop the whole system. Cynically, I think the answer is often that you start off doing whichever you can get backing from investors to pursue- and that can be as much fashion as anything else, but the key is to keep the other routes open until you're sufficiently far down the line as you can choose- hopefully that's where Plastic Logic are now! Good luck to them.