Just What I Don't Want This Christmas!

Another unwanted Christmas present comes in the form of a new eBook reader that looks remarkably old and clunky and reminds us of…

The Aigo EB6301 is a 6-inch eInk ‘Lookie likie’ doesn’t have WIFI, support ePub and comes at an announced high price of 2499 yuan ( $366 USD).

Certainly one we would want to return if given this Christmas.

Line Up The Exclusive and Special Editions

Here's a good game for Christmas - line up the Sony exclusive readers.

1. UK retailer John Lewis exclusive.

2. The Ian Fleming / James Bond limited edition.

3. The Michael Connelly limited edition.

4. The Debbie Macomber limited edition.

5. The Danielle Steel limited edition.

6. The James Patterson limited edition.

7. The Harlequin 60th celebration Romance limited edition.

8. The Mills and Boon exclusive edition

Another eBook 'Lookie Likie'

Now we suggest you decide what is different apart from the name? We bet you can even give the specification of these devices without looking them up. Give you some clues:

screen size?
memory?
Formats supported?
Price?

Don't know then click here

eInk and Chips

Today the cost of eInk devices is still high and although it is falling the drop is not sufficient to engage mass adoption. The devices are gaining consumer visibility, however when we look hard at them they clearly lack that iPod , Walkman iconic moment a point not lost on the consumer. The true tipping point toward eInk and the myriad of ‘lookie likie’ devices is becoming less likely as we see hybrid devices that combine two screens, the emergence of the Google online model and the emergence of better screen quality and applications on mobiles. This is nothing to do with ebooks it is to do with the devices or how we expect consumers to read them.

This week E Ink Corp., the prime developer of the greyscale "electronic paper" technology used in the majority of the current eBooks and Freescale Semiconductor, the Austin-Texas-based provider of eBook processors and have announced that they are collaborating. The objective is to develop a chip solution which integrates Freescale's i.MX processor technology with E Ink's Vizplex display controller.

Why this is important is that it starts to shift the economics of much of the technology into mass production and creates a standard base that can both lower cost of units and facilitate further innovation re tablet, laptop notebook PCs. However, the question is still whether eInk is a long term solution or a short term fix. Will technologies such as OLED overtake it? Will it ever produce acceptable levels of colour? Will the current crop of eReaders be sitting in landfill sites in 5 years time?

B&N To Go Colour Screen?

So is Barnes & Noble launching their ebook reader next month or next year?
A 6-inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard from Plastic Logic but watching the video below, care of www.mashable.com, we wonder if Plastic Logic are using OLED, LCD or eInk screen technology.



To read more www.mashable.com

More eBook Pretenders

We get somewhat shell shocked with the constant dribble of new eReaders and wonder how many will survive a cold winter and are real contenders and how many are just after their 15 minutes in the spotlight. Last week iRex caused a minor stir with their new model. The attention was captured because it was 3G enabled and lost because of its price and lack of touch screen – there again iRex is used to being off target so nothing mew there.

Today we spotted yet another pretender the Hexaglot N518 powered by Hexaglot, which is another 5” eInk ‘lookie likie’ which boosts as its unique selling point that you can also draw and even write on its display screen. Naturally the device has all the usual features and with their special sensor pen the user can write directly on the screen, adding comments, notifications and by handwriting text recognition converted into printed text and saving them. It also appears to be able to support Adobe’s ACS4 DRM. However at 279 euros its off taget.

Yet another 'Lookie likie' eInk reader

Egadget reports on yet another ebook eink lookie likie ereader, the Matsunichi’s ER600 ebook reader.

Nothing new and much the same as the rest of the pretenders but it does optional 3G/3.5G WWAN, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to whatever feeds the device. As Christmas draws ever nearer expect many more wannabies.

Digital Textbooks Are Only Part of The Solution

We read today in the Bookseller that ‘Amazon prepares for 'textbook e-reader wars'’. The story emulates from Evan Schnittman, vice-president global business development at Oxford University Press who claims that amazon had revealed the device early so it could stake out its territory before the academic market becomes home to the "textbook e-reader wars".

The reality is that there will be a battleground in all levels of education for what is a very lucrative prize, that of the device of choice for students of all ages and the sale of content to them. Will the solution be the same? It’s a hard call, but what is clear is that the device by itself will not be the answer. The device plus ebooks, in whatever format, is even not the answer. To everyone but the textbook publisher these are merely part of the answer.

Students require connectivity, reference, to be able to capture notes, bookmark, diaries, collate files, create documents, will probably not be restricted to text, or even greyscale. Therefore ask yourself as a student with limited disposable income, would you rather invest in a Kindle DX at $489 (£325) or more suitable devices that are not tied to content and a single business model and that can’t connect to all resources and can do more than download and store mere documents.

Ask these three basic questions to the students:
Do you own a iphone?
Do you own a kindle?
Do you own a laptop / netbook?
Next ask them if they don’t have all the above would they expect to buy one in the next 12months?

The King or Kindle may have new clothes but it’s the same underneath.

Another Day Another Kindle

We have been away on business whilst the Kindle 3 hit the market. The device was as expected and the reaction and pitch has been interesting to catch up on after the event:

Digital Demographics
Bowker, at a BISG's ‘Making Information Pay’ conference revealed demographic information that claimed that older readers are the biggest buyers of ebooks. The statement caused many industry thinkers to start to ponder about the attraction of large print, weight, ease of handling and much more perceptions. The reality is that older buyers are those that buy books full stop; they have more time, disposable income and much more. Is it surprising they are the ones buying ebooks – No? Some would say that it’s obvious that the grey market is the one with the largest opportunity and its somewhat condescending to find it a surprise.

Newsprint and magazines are going to go Kindle.
Newspapers may be going downhill but that doesn’t mean that the wave of large screen eInk devices have the answer. We now have PC news sites, smartphone apps and the ereader device. We know that Murdoch wants one, Hearst wants one and we assume the public want one, but the operative word may be one not three or four.
One important digital newspaper issue is how do readers want the news presented? Do they want it in alerts tuned to their personal preferences? Do they want it to look and feel like a paper, after all it has taken many years to perfect the user experience? Do they want it in summary with detail on request? Do they want ads or ads free? Do they want a fully interactive experience and animated experience or merely a captured textural one splattered with the odd greyscale image? Do they want colour?

Once we have addressed the format then there is the price or subscription issue? Then there is the issue about geography and getting the news delivered locally wherever you are in the world. We could go on...

Making the ereader bigger so it looks like a newspaper may not be the answer.

Textbooks are going to be Kindlebooks
Students are going to embrace the new Kindle. The logic appears to be that textbooks are too expensive so ebooks will take the market. So we expect the students to carry around a laptop or netbook, a Kindle and a smartphone? As we walk around the streets of Amsterdam this weekend we wonder who has smoked the most weed? Students require more than ebooks and they already have laptops and smartphones so why would they spend on a device that will give them nothing they don’t have today? Cheaper books have to be offset against the device cost. Students have to live and study with an open, connected campus world and will that fit with fortress Amazon? Princeton and other campus may adopt the device to drive their paperless dream but why not simply adopt a netbook and offer the student’s real choice. Some may say that its easy to create a news splash but living up to the logic can be hard.

Finally, the Kindle DX is priced at whopping $489, a higher price point than a Netbook.

Standards
The Kindle does not handle epub and the standard’s world will continue to argue that this the biggest weakness. We agree that an open standard is the best way but we also recognise the power and openness of Adobe’s other protected format Adobe eBook based on PDF. It may not offer everything that epub offers, but is supported by the same DRM services, ereader devices and is cheaper to produce. Amazon’s propriety format is either their Achilles heel or their trump card and until we see what others do over the summer, we believe that it remains difficult call for the independent.

Finally, we are disappointed that Amazon chooses to change the name as we were looking forward to reaching the K9 version in the future, but more on the DX brand later….

B&N ebook Noise?

Scott Moritz, writing in The Street.com has started a rumour that, dependant where you stand, may have legs. The rumour is that Barnes and Noble hot on the back of buying Fictionwise is now working on bringing their own Kindle type device to the market.

The article ‘Tech Rumor of the Day: Barnes & Noble’ goes on to list all the usual and obvious partner suspects on the wireless side and the revenue that Amazon is expected to turn over on the Kindle, but fails to deliver any real substance on what, when and how the rumour would turn to fact.

It does remind us that Barnes & Noble has been through the ebook tablet before in 2003. In fact there isn’t much that B&N hasn’t tried at one stage or another and they also are not just a bookseller but also a sizable publisher, packager and reprint business.

The big question is whether it is wiser to strike out by yourself and trade off the B&N brand, which only really has resonance in the North American market, or hook up with others that may offer a bigger pool, protection from risk and the ability to exploit its own assets. Waterstones achieved a UK exclusive with Sony and although that particular door may be shut in the US, it may not be shut on a wireless or new model. They also now have to build Fictionwise into the offer and importantly, does it make sense to pin too much on ebook only devices when the mobile is grabbing all the attention, the netbook is coming down fast and you have Fictionwise?

So it may be a choice between exclusivity, which may be offer short term benefit but long term exposure or collaboration and openness which certainly would get them attention to be seen by many as far more logical than the current ‘aggregator centric’ market model and give them the flexibility to move quickly with the flow in the future. Why invest in tin when there are some big outsiders hovering to move in and one eink device, netbook, mobile isn’t much different from another and consumer is fickle? Lining up with Newscorp or Hearst would make more sense.

The one thing that is certain is that any move really should be made in 2009 while the market is finding its feet.

Oh Brother! Yet Another eBook Reader

Read an eBook week seems to have caught on in the east with yet another pretender new ebook readers

First we have Brother, the company famous for sewing machines and printers have announced a “document reader”, the SV-100B, intended for displaying ebooks and technical documentation. The Brother SV-100B, has however broken out of the eink camp and has an LCD display, measuring 9.7-inches and running at 1,200 x 825 150dpi resolution. It still claims 83 hours of battery life and although there is no internal storage by use of its 2 GB micro SD card you can store10,000 A4 pages. The file transfer appears cumbersome despite using its own SV-Manager software and the position on DRM is unclear. It is planned to land in Japan in the summer.

However the bucket of ice may come in the form of its $1,450price ticket.

The Fujitsu eReader Surfaces in a Restaurant

Back on 15th July last year we wrote about the Fujitsu Flepia ebook reader with colour screen. We reported that the devices were rumoured to be $941 and questioned whether the price was too high and also the lack of keyboard.

The recent spat of ebook announcements has certainly woken up the market and we now read that the price is still likely to be around the $900 mark but the screen is touch sensitive so our fears on the lack of a keyboard have been addressed. It has built in wi-fi, USB 2.0 and SD card connectivity, as well as stereo speakers and the whole thing runs for up to 50 hours on a single charge.

So where it and what is are it plans? Today it is apparent to be found in the Termina Kinshicho Fujiya restaurant in Tokyo and is under a test is being conducted as a joint venture between SoftBank Telecom and Mainichi Newspapers. Customers of the restaurant are able to browse newspapers and advertisements, train schedules and weather reports wirelessly sent to the terminals. Even the menu is on the reader!

Review of our 2008 Predictions - 8.Readers

At the end of 2007 we made 10 predictions for 2008. Many predictions made have now been conveniently forgotten but we stand by our thinking at the time and believe it appropriate we openly review these individually and see what we think happened and assess them appropriately. Today we review the readers.

8. Readers – an upgraded Sony, Kindle and the introduction of the Apple offer. The key is not the reader but the content but what is becoming crystal clear is that platform convergence onto the mobile and its network is certain.

We recognised the limitations of the current eink device offer and that a single dimensional device offer was not going to fly. True the Kindle started to raise the market awareness and demand but even with the Oprah endorsement it isn’t going to dominate anything except the eink segment. Sony claimed 300,000 units and 3 millions downloads in 2 years but when compared to the sales of iPhones alone this was a mere blip on the market.

Sony tried to create suspense in the UK market with a Waterstones exclusive launch. It achieved its ‘15 minutes’ of news but was soon usurped by the release of their bigger and better model only two weeks later, (how to endear oneself to those who had just bought the original model). We had the introduction and announcement of more and more readers - the same technology in different industrial units, but all lacking any WOW factor. We now have a number of A4 sized readers and also a new breed of larger eink screens aimed at the newsprint and professional markets. The issue is not the size but minor detail like no colour, graphics or video. Some would say that they merely converted text from paper to screen and at a heavy price.

We have long championed the mobile platform as the natural mobile device alongside its bigger notebook brother. Convergence continued at a pace and we saw some exciting iPhone applications start to appear in 2008. We now have Symbian/ Nokia, Blackberry/ RIM, Android / Google and of course iPhone / Apple all poised and ready to move in 2009.

We must also congratulate Nintendo for their entry which on reflection offers more that the eInk crowd.

We believe that 10 out of 10 is justified.