Well, this isn't a huge surprise, since we've seen the rough outline of a nondescript, details-scarce reader from Barnes & Noble
tucked away in FCCland, but the
Wall Street Journal has "people briefed on the matter" who are saying the reader will be out possibly as early as next month. Word is the reader will have a six-inch E-Ink screen, with a touchscreen interface and virtual keyboard, and it will also have a wireless internet hookup to that great bookstore in the sky. With an
IREX wireless reader already featuring the B&N ebook store, and a
Plastic Logic device doing B&N exclusively, we'd say Barnes & Noble is certainly working this from a number of potentially redundant angles. It's unclear what particular innovation or distinction a Barnes & Noble-branded reader would bring, or who might build it, but our fingers are crossed for one particular avenue of one-upmanship: price.
[Via
Reuters; thanks Tom]
posted Oct 8th 2009 4:52PM
Paul is the podcast on today?
Yay! Let the fragmentation of services and compatibility begin!
lol could not say it better
In Russia ebook reads you.
I would like to at least acknowledge that you did that.
Seems like they totally are over it though man.
Coming Soon:
Walmart eReader ($9.99 comes with free gallon of milk - the fat one)
iRead ($999 comes with a $5 iTunes gift card to partially paid your Twilight $29.99 ebook)
BestBuy eReader ($19.99 - in your face Circuit City.... oh wait! never mind...)
KIRF iRaed ($3.99 - comes with iPod, iPhone, iSight, camera, Chinese User Interface, 3.5, 2.5, 1.5 mm jacks)
I would gladly sacrifice compatibility and interoperability for some more competition in the e-book marketplace.
because a reader using a more ubiquitous format would be impossible?
Granted, I do agree with the spirit of your statement.
Very nice device!
This really makes me happy...e-readers are totally the future of literature...Anybody want Lockerz invites, just drop me a line - bobbybernard@rocketmail.com.. no Spam, no bull shit. Also, for some reason Yahoo addresses wont work. Hurry before they are gone!!!
Begone from here! Shoo!
@ tikiteko
Definately still laughing at that comment... The Gallon Milk part almost had me crying.....but really do we really need another colorless E-Reader...
Please make it student friendly. Textbooks have tons of stuff going on in the margins etc.
A spectacular price is doubtful. E-Ink screens originally cost $250 each when they were first introduced, and while they've fallen a lot in price the $200-$250 e-ink devices can't be leaving that much room for profit as it is.
That doesn't mean that the price can't be lower...look at the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3, for which the manufacturers lose money on every unit and then make it up in software licensing sales. B&N could totally do the same.
From the WSJ:
"In April, research firm iSuppli estimated that the Kindle costs $185 to make, but Amazon’s CFO Tom Szkutak later said the true cost was “significantly higher.”"
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/08/amazon-cuts-kindle-price-by-50/
Since B&N recently acquired Fictionwise, the question arises: Will their reader read any of the formats sold there, or will they use yet another format?
B&N implemented their ebook store return a couple of months ago following their acquisition of FictionWise. Unfortunately for ebook users who don't want to be tied to outdated formats and proprietary DRM schemes, B&N elected to use the eReader format that is sold on both the FictionWise.com and eReader.com websites. Ebook publishing community is collectively moving toward a new standard format ePub, but instead of baselining their new store on this emerging standard they selected one of the oldest and least extensible formats available. It was originally developed as Peanut ebooks that became Palm ebooks. It forces artifical segmenting of books, lacks modern ebook features and is only used by B&N and the two sub-sites it owns FictionWise and eReader. I'm such a fan of B&N over Amazon, but I can't bring myself to buy 1980s software technology at a 2009 price, so I'll probably go with the Sony device that offers compatibility with the new ePub standard as well as backward compatibility with their proprietary legacy format (LRX/LRF).
The iTablet is going to demolish all of these eReaders. Just like the iPhone challenged the cell phone industry to step up its game the iTablet will ammmake eReaders obsolete in one fell swoop. Watch what happens in the spring.