Tag Archives | E-Readers

Sony's New Readers: Better Still, Still Pricey

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 31, 2010 at 11:38 pm

Back in 2006, before the world knew what a Kindle was, Sony released the first modern e-reader with a power-efficient, glare-free E-Ink screen. It’s upgraded them and added new models ever since–and it’s announcing improved versions of all its models today, a week after Amazon started shipping its newest Kindle. The company gave me a sneak peek last week.

As before, Sony is the only major e-reader maker that offers devices in three sizes: the 7″ Daily Edition, the 6″ Touch Edition (with a screen the same size as the one on the standard Kindle and on the Nook), and the 5″ Pocket Edition. Last year’s Touch and Daily Editions had touch-screen interfaces that worked with a fingertip (for general navigation) or a stylus (for note-taking and other precision work). The big news is that the whole line now sports touch, including the Pocket Edition–and Sony has come up with a way to implement technology without adding a layer to the screen. (Last year’s touch Sonys had murkier screens than the non-touch competition.)

In my brief hands-on time with the readers, the displays looked good. (I wasn’t able to compare them side-by-side with other e-readers, but they were noticeably more legible than last year’s Sonys.) The touch input worked reasonably well, too. But flipping pages didn’t have quite the effortless feel of e-reading apps on an iPad, an iPhone, or an Android phone, and I think the Kindle’s less fancy input system–physical buttons and a keyboard–works at least as well for the basics of exploring books.

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E-Reader Price Wars: Kobo Tries to Keep Up

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 31, 2010 at 8:33 am

When cool products cost a lot of money, there’s plenty of opportunity for other manufacturers to introduce less-cool competitors–or ones with fewer features, at least–at lower prices. But what happens when the cool products get radically cheaper? We’re seeing that entertaining scenario play out in the e-reader market.

When bookstore behemoth Borders announced in March it would start selling a basic reader called the Kobo for $150, it was $110 less than the Kindle and Nook. And even though it didn’t have a 3G connection–it made you buy books on a computer and sync them via USB–it was a deal.

But then Barnes & Noble set off e-readers price wars by cutting the price of the Nook from $259 to $199 and introducing a $149 Wi-Fi-only model. Amazon knocked the Kindle’s price down to $189 a few hours later–and last week, it shipped the third-generation Kindle in both a $189 3G model and a $139 Wi-Fi only one.

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At Last, an E-Reader from the Sharper Image

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 25, 2010 at 12:37 pm

I may have declared e-readers dead prematurely.  The Literati is coming to October to Best Buy, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, and other mass-market merchants in October. It’s a Sharper Image product–although “The Sharper Image,” like “Polaroid,” is now a floating brand name that available to be licensed for just about anything.

Sounds like the device’s most distinctive feature is its screen: It’s 7″ (an inch bigger than the Kindle and the Nook) and is color (LCD, presumably). No word on what sort of battery life it delivers. There’s Wi-Fi onboard and a wireless bookstore powered by Kobo, the Canadian company behind Borders’ e-reader.

As you can see in the photo below, the Literati looks a bit like a taller, skinnier Kindle. It’ll go for $159–which is a little less than the 3G Kindle and a little more than the Wi-Fi one–or less.

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New Kindle is Here, Selling Like an Unspecified Number of Hotcakes

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 25, 2010 at 8:17 am

Amazon has announced that it’s started shipping its third-generation Kindle e-reader to customers.The new version is thinner and lighter, with a better screen and longer battery life, and it now starts at $139 (for a Wi-Fi version). Basically, it’s the most Kindle-like Kindle yet, rather than an iPad wannabee. I’m looking forward to seeing one in person.

In Apple-like fashion, Amazon likes to crow about how well the Kindle is selling. But unlike Apple, which frequently quotes sales stats in millions or billions, Amazon has never said how many Kindles it’s sold.

So the company always brags in a vague, self-referential way, which it’s doing today:

Amazon.com today announced that more new generation Kindles were ordered in the first four weeks of availability than in the same timeframe following any other Kindle launch, making the new Kindles the fastest-selling ever.  In addition, in the four weeks since the introduction of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G, customers ordered more Kindles  on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product, continuing Kindle’s over two-year run as the bestselling product across all the products sold on Amazon.com.

Amazon long ago dedicated the best real estate on its site–the top of its homepage–exclusively to Kindle hype. So it would be astonishing if it wasn’t the best settling product on the site. And with the repeated price cuts the e-reader gotten, it’s not surprising that sales continue to increase.

There’s no doubt that the Kindle is an important product and a hit for Amazon, but unless the company discloses actual figures someday, you’ve got to wonder: Does it choose not to get specific because it worries that hard numbers would provoke a spate of “E-readers are still a tiny market compared to the iPod and other landmark gizmos” stories?

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E-Readers are Dead. Long Love E-Reading!

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 16, 2010 at 12:46 pm

Over at Ars Technica, Jon Stokes is noting that the explosion of new e-readers that seemed to be coming this year has turned out to be more of a whimper than a bang. Plastic Logic’s Que ProReader is dead, Hearst’s Skiff reader shows no signs of life, Samsung’s E-Ink reader is apparently skipping the US market, and none of the umpteen readers from lesser-known companies has become a breakout hit.

Still in the game: Amazon’s Kindle (the e-reader that’s synonymous with e-readers), Barnes & Noble’s Nook (which B&N is about to double down on), and Sony’s Reader (the first modern e-reader). Oh, and there’s Kobo, the Canadian e-reader backed by Borders. I don’t see any of these going away anytime soon–actually, as Slate’s Farhad Manjoo points out, the likely scenario is that they’ll get even cheaper and sell even better.

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Que ProReader Nevermore: Plastic Logic Gives Up

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 11, 2010 at 1:52 am

I kind of figured I was going to type these words sooner or later: Plastic Logic has canceled its Que e-reader. The company began demoing its gadget almost two years ago, well before the iPad era. But after multiple delays, it’s decided that the fast-evolving e-reader market has rendered the Que obsolete before it ever shipped. It says it’ll be back with a “second-generation” reader. And it’s finally figured out that it’s a bad idea to say when it expects to ship it.

(Sorry, Plastic Logic: You don’t get to call a product “second generation” when the first one didn’t ship. The first Que turned out to be a failed prototype. The next one, if any, will be the first-gen version.)

The Que had an oversized E-Ink screen, a focus on business users, a slick user interface, and unique plastic-electronics technology. Plastic Logic never explained why it couldn’t release the thing when it thought it would–it may just have been that the company was far better at drumming up hoopla than it was at setting a realistic development schedule for an ambitious gadget. In retrospect, it would have been a lot more efficient if the company had decided it would need to start over back on January 27th, the day Apple announced the iPad.

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Barnes & Noble Doubles Down on the Nook

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 30, 2010 at 7:21 am

Amazon.com’s Kindle may have the highest profile of any e-reader, but Barnes & Noble seems to be pretty darn serious about its Nook. The New York Times reports that the company is planning to make space for Nook boutiques in its superstores, dedicating a thousand feet of floor space near their cafés to Nooks, Nook accessories, and in-person and video demonstrations.

B&N plans to free up room for Nooks in part by shrinking space devoted to CDs; in this era, you gotta think that it probably would be deemphasizing sales of music on shiny discs no matter what. It says it’s not going to carry fewer dead-tree books.

The move presumably means that B&N is in the hardware business for the long haul and already has future generations of Nooks in the works. The first-generation Nook got off to a somewhat bumpy start–its software was slow and buggy, and some promised features weren’t immediately available–but the company has improved it through multiple software updates. It’s also knocked the price down to $199 and introduced a $149 model with Wi-Fi but no 3G connection.

Barnes & Noble also offers e-reader software for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC, and Mac, and it powers the e-book stores for devices from Nook competitors such as Pandigital. The Times doesn’t say whether the new boutiques will spotlight any of these other ways to read digital books.

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New Amazon Kindle: Even Kindle-ier and Less IPaddish

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2010 at 7:24 pm

What should the next-generation Kindle be like? Like the current Kindle, only more so. That’s clearly Amazon.com’s strategy, judging from the news about the new Kindle which first broke tonight on Engadget.
In the wake of the iPad, Amazon could choose from several obvious potential strategies for the future of its e-reader. The one it’s chosen, at least for now, is to focus on reading–and to move away from the iPad rather than towards it, by making the Kindle smaller, lighter, and more affordable.

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