BenQ bringing nReader e-book reader to Asia
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 19th 2009 10:19AM
posted November 19th 2009 10:19AM
We're still not quite sure this mad rush to produce e-book readers will result in anything but tears and heartbreak, but that isn't stopping BenQ from joining in: it's just announced the nReader, which will hit Taiwan in January along with an online bookstore, followed by Japan and China. The hardware itself is pretty standard fare, with a six-inch touchscreen electronic ink display, 2GB of memory, and ePub / HTML / PDF support, so we'll see if this thing manages to move 300,000 units next year like BenQ says it will -- that seems fairly optimistic to us, but it's just a drop in the bucket according to BenQ, which says that over 100 million e-readers will sold in ten years. We'll see.
i cannot sign out
@avis I mean I could not sign out of Engadget
@avis
Sorry to hear that, check out my fancy new name!!!
@avis
Oh my god!
So you are trapped in there?
Can you breath OK?
I will try to e-mail you food and H2O....
You will be like one of those tamagotchi pets...
@mike
hahah, yeah. I thought long and hard before taking the plunge into this uername, but whatever, I like it today. Maybe I should go get a tattoo of it before I change my mind.
Drop them below £100 and they will sell like mad
e-book reader flood gates
Actualy, I think the whole e-reader thing is gonna' fly.
Everyone seems to think that because readership of print is down there is not enough market interest in something like this.
But in my own personal world I have had at least three people who are not normally gadget geeks at all ask me about e-readers - exactly what they are, how you get books, and which is a good pick to buy.
This was either for themselves or as a gift.
I think if the quality keeps going up and distribution models keep expanding and the price hits the $100 to $150 mark (which chip maker marvel says is possible within a year even) then it will be the big seller of next or following x-mas.
That is assuming this x-mas is good enough to lift the economy out of ground cushion flight and back into the sky.
Yay, an e-book reader for the black fellows :P
BenQ makes some serious hardware... Apple better watch out,
Videos for this device show just another sluggish ebook reader with a far oversized Chinese book font (probably because at small sizes, most Chinese fonts look like rubbish on e-ink). It offers nothing particularly interesting, and is too expensive for what little it does offer. I was hoping for better, but a very low bar seems to be set for ebook readers in general.
There is very limited availability of ebook readers in Taiwan, and they're not particularly popular devices despite being hyped a lot. If this is sold locally, it'll be one of the only ebook readers in the Taiwan market, so it has a small advantage in terms of availability.