Hallelujah!
Sony has done seen the light! According to BusinessWeek, the consumer electronics giant is set to announce a Librie-like E-ink e-book reader for the US that both--are you ready
for this--uses SD cards for data storage and displays native PDF files (along with a proprietary Sony format--baby
steps, you know?). It seems that the lackluster success of the Librie overseas, combined with an upcoming wave of
e-book readers as competition, convinced Sony that more openness was key to the success of this device. Industry
heavyweights Simon & Schuster, Random House, and HarperCollins are already signed up to provide content, with the
latter two promising to digitize their entire back catalogs for inclusion on Sony's Connect music-and-now-book service, for a
combined total of up to 50,000 titles. Sony certainly has an advantage here by being first out of the gate with a
relatively large content offering and purported 15-book battery life, but products from iRex, Jinke, and more flexible devices from other
manufacturers may prove more popular if they can provide consumers with similar content but better hardware.[Via MobileRead]