How many books will a Sony Reader owner purchase in the life of the device? 30? Take that figure, divide by $350 to $400 and you get the overhead per ebook for the device. Now factor in what appears to be only a 20% discount per ebook title and you are paying more (nearly double?) to purchase and read ebooks than to buy them as paper books.

Now Newsweek, please explain how the Sony Reader is going to “take off” unless Sony sells the reader for a lot less than is rumored. If Sony is confident of success they should sell the readers for $100 and sit back to scoop up the money from ebook sales. Except, even at $100 a pop, if you average owner only buys 30 ebooks, they’re still paying the same as a paper book.

With no annotation ability it’ll be a zero in the education market.

Hmmmm… still sounds like an early adopter device to me.