GigaOM » E Ink

Kobo launches $169 ‘Porsche of e-readers’ for power users

Laura Hazard Owen — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:30:00 +0000

E-readers aren’t usually thought of as luxury gadgets, but Kobo is hoping to change that with a new model, the Aura HD, launched Monday. At $169, it’s more expensive than the competition, but the company says the Aura’s large, high-definition front-lit screen makes it a perfect device for “passionate book lovers” who read several ebooks a week. These customers aren’t particularly price-conscious, Kobo says, and they want a better e-reading experience than that available through e-ink devices currently on the market.

The Aura HD is “only for those people who really, really care about reading in their lives,” Michael Tamblyn, the company’s EVP of content, sales and merchandising, told me. (Kobo’s marketing materials call it “the Porsche of e-readers.”) According to Kobo’s customer research, Tamblyn said, 90 percent of its e-reader users intend to purchase a new e-reader in the next year and “want to see what the next generation of e-ink looks like.” Thirty-six percent of Kobo e-reader customers, Tamblyn said, also own a tablet but “an e-ink device continues to be the primary way they do their reading.”

The Aura HD has a larger screen than most e-readers — 6.8 inches, compared to the standard six-inch screen. Like the Glo, it has a built-in light. The screen’s resolution is 265 DPI, which Kobo says is the highest resolution of any e-ink screen on the market. (Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite also has a high-resolution screen, but Amazon doesn’t state the number of pixels, saying only that it has “62 percent more” of them.) Storage is 4 GB and is expandable. The device is designed to be extra-comfortable to hold. Battery life is up to two months with the light on or off.

The Aura HD is available for preorder in North America at Kobo.com starting April 16, and will be available in stores in Canada and the U.K. on April 25. It should be in U.S. stores in May or June, though the company couldn’t get more specific than that. Kobo says it will announce international availability soon.

At $169, the Aura HD is more expensive than any of Kobo’s other e-readers and more expensive than the competition (the Wi-Fi Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with ads and $139 without; the Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light is $119.) The company will continue to focus on the $129.99 Kobo Glo as our “widest-adoption device,” Tamblyn said. But “for those readers who are most passionate about reading, they weren’t necessarily interested in finding the cheapest device possible…These are people buying hundreds of books every year and often reading several books a week. For those people, price is simply less important.”

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Video look: E-ink Android phone that runs for weeks on a charge

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:25:13 +0000

A number of high-performing, cutting edge smartphones were introduced both at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show and this week’s Mobile World Congress. With super high-resolution screens and fast processors, however, most of these handsets run out of juice by day’s end, if not before. Would you give up some speed, features and functions for a Android phone that lasts for a few weeks on a charge? If so, this e-ink Android prototype might be right up your alley.

The folks at MobileGeeks took the prototype for a spin at MWC and you’ll immediately notice that the device is not quite ready for the market. Meaning: the touchscreen isn’t calibrated properly and the display refresh rate isn’t as fast as it needs to be. Still, there’s potential here if the technology improves.

Ideally, these lower-powered e-ink displays would offer fast frame rates and even color; some companies have attempted this in the past — namely Qualcomm and Pixel Qi — but actual products have been lackluster at best. In fact, Qualcomm ceased making screens with its Mirasol display technology and instead began licensing the tech last year.

Are we really close to smartphones that use e-ink touchscreens and last for weeks on a single charge? Not likely. But I could easily envision voice capability in a connected e-ink reader device.

We’re long past the point where voice is an activity limited solely to a “phone.” Communication is evolving to where we want to be in contact with others through a connected device no matter what that device is: A computer, a tablet, a game console, a television or even an e-ink reader. Well, as long we can turn the ringer off when we’re reading!

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CES 2013: Will your next tablet be made of plastic paper?

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:05:24 +0000

Plastic Logic, an e-ink display company that has had its shares of ups and downs — mostly downs — is back with a new innovation: a paper-like tablet. Later this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show, Plastic Logic will be showing off the PaperTab prototype but on Monday shared a brief video of the technology. By all appearances, it looks like it combines a thin, flexible display with a computer chip and sensors:

Indeed, the 10.7-inch touchscreen PaperTab is powered by an Intel Core i5 processor. By slightly bending the display, you can turn a page and data can be shared between two PaperTabs by tapping them together.

We’re still early in the tablet days, so don’t expect to see this product on a retail shelf anytime soon. As we’ve seen from both successful tablets and slates that haven’t sold well, the platform, interface and applications are all important pieces to the tablet puzzle.

I think this tech is geared more towards reading activities than all of the various things a tablet can do. But the idea of carrying a lightweight, bendable piece of plastic paper is intriguing for various future products; enough for me to try and stop by to see the PaperTab with my own eyes later this week.

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popSLATE case adds e-ink screen to the back of iPhone 5

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:15:11 +0000

Sure, the new iPhone 5 has a gorgeous Retina display. That doesn’t mean fans of e-ink have to carry a second device though: popSLATE is an iPhone 5 case that has a 4-inch e-ink display on the back, making for a second screen experience on one handheld gadget.

The popSLATE case is a new Indiegogo project that’s looking to raise$150,000 in funding over the next 48 days. I was skeptical about the case until I saw how the designers have implemented it in this video. Having a second screen is one thing, but being able to push information to it directly from the iPhone 5 shows some promise.

Depending on the software implementation, the ideas for using e-ink as a secondary screen are relatively limitless. You could have a custom case design with a picture that you or a friend snapped, for example. And you could easily change that picture at any time. Instead of double-tapping to switch between two apps — say some notes and a map — could be handled by flipping the phone from front to back. I see potential here.

The project team is also planning to release APIs so that app developers can add popSLATE integration in their software. Wouldn’t it be nice if some of the e-reader apps added support? I’m looking at you Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Using that second screen shouldn’t come at the cost of much power from the iPhone itself. The popSLATE uses a pass-through Lightning connector for data and power, so it will use juice from the handset. But e-ink only uses power when the display changes: Once a screen is rendered, it stays that way without using any additional power.

The early bird special to back the project and get a popSLATE is $79, with delivery expected in May 2013. That’s a discount from the planned $119 retail price if the popSLATE is funded.

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Why e-readers evolved a lot today: Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:43:38 +0000

For all of the good things about e-readers — their portability, capacity and convenience — they seem a bit old-fashioned. That isn’t just because they are single-function devices (after all, books are, too) but because the grayish tinge on e-ink screens looks outdated. Today, though, with the announcements of the front-lit Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo, e-readers took a big step forward and became more appealing for avid readers.

To be sure, Barnes & Noble was first to launch a front-lit e-reader, the $139 Nook Touch with GlowLight, and until today it’s been the only front-lit e-reader on the market. Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble experienced “production scaling issues” that prevented it from fulfilling GlowLight orders for a few months. The Nook with GlowLight is back in stock now, but as of today it doesn’t matter since the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo have better displays.

Nook with GlowLight has a regular e-ink screen. When you hold it (without its light turned on) next to a Nook without a GlowLight, their screens look the same — grayish. Compare the Kindle Paperwhite to an earlier generation Kindle, though, and their screens don’t look the same. Amazon says the Paperwhite contains 62 percent more pixels and 25 percent increased contrast, and you can see that just by looking at it — even when the light isn’t on. (Update: Some commenters, using other photos online, say the Kindle Paperwhite does not have a brighter screen when the light is turned off. Holding my Kindle Touch up to the Paperwhite at the event, I could see a difference in resolution but should have been more hesitant to claim anything about the brightness of the screen with the light turned off. When we get a Paperwhite for review, I’ll have more pictures for you.) In other words, we’re not just getting a light here, we’re getting an improved display overall. The Kobo Glo has an XGA e-ink screen, which also means better resolution and contrast.

The biggest difference between the Kindle Paperwhite and the front-lit devices from Barnes & Noble and Kobo, though, is battery life. Jeff Bezos said during Thursday’s press conference that Amazon expects people to leave the light on all the time, even in bright rooms. While Barnes & Noble stressed the Nook with GlowLight’s use in bed, in a dark room, as your partner sleeps next to you, Bezos says Amazon “figured out early” that people want the light on by default. We’re used to staring at well-lit computer and tablet screens, after all. So the Kindle Paperwhite’s battery life is 8 weeks with the light on (based on half an hour of reading a day). Meanwhile, Nook with GlowLight’s battery life is a month with the light on (based on half an hour of reading a day) and two months with it off. Kobo’s is worse: A month with the light off, “up to 55 hours of continuous use” with the light on.

Finally, assuming that you’re okay with ads, Amazon beats the competition on price as well as other features. The Kindle Paperwhite WiFi is $119 with special offers, $139 without, and the Kindle Paperwhite 3G is $179 with Special Offers and $199 without. (Yes, $199 is a lot to pay for an e-reader. It’s as much as the newly announced 7-inch, 16 GB Kindle Fire HD.) Nook and Kobo don’t have ads, but the Kobo Glo is $129.99 and Nook with GlowLight is $139.

Overall, we saw today that e-readers can continue to improve even without adding more tablet-like features. The Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo are still single-function devices (Kindle’s “experimental browser” aside), but they’re substantially better than what was on the market before. That suggests we shouldn’t rule e-readers out, or assume that tablets are going to subsume them.

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Kobo takes aim at Amazon with two new e-readers and a tablet

Laura Hazard Owen — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 06:00:33 +0000

With Amazon widely expected to announce new Kindle devices at a press event in Los Angeles Thursday, Kobo is getting its news out a little early: The Toronto-based company, which is owned by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, is launching two new e-readers – one front-lit, one five-inch — and a tablet called the Kobo Arc.

The Tablet: Kobo Arc, $199.99 8 GB/$249.99 16 GB

The Arc is Kobo’s second attempt at a 7-inch Android tablet. The company released the $199.99 Vox last November, and while it got some decent reviews, there was little reason to buy it over competitors like Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. Hence the revamp, name change and price drop.

Specs: The Arc, which is $199.99 for the 8 GB model or $249.99 for the 16 GB version, runs on Android 4.0 and has a 1280×800 resolution 7-inch display, a front-facing camera, WiFi and 1 GB of RAM. No 3G, no GPS. . The Arc’s battery life is “up to 10 hours of continuous reading/video with WiFi off” and two weeks on standby.

Content: Kobo doesn’t have its own app store; it gives users access to apps and games through Google Play. The Arc’s main selling point appears to be an “exclusive interface” called “Tapestries,” which users “build” based on their interests and favorite content. The Kobo Arc “intelligently recommends new ebooks, videos, music and more based on the content you ‘pin’ to your Tapestry.” I haven’t seen a demo of how this works.

The Arc is preloaded with apps including Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Rdio, Zinio and PressReader, as well as Google apps. Users can download the Netflix Android app through the Google Play store.

Availability: The Arc will be available in the U.S. in November.

Bottom line: The Arc is a little pricier than the Nook Tablets (which are $179 for 8 GB version or $199 for 16 GB). We don’t know yet how the price compares to the Kindle Fire’s, since Amazon is launching a new version Thursday morning. I haven’t tested a Kobo Arc, but the specs alone don’t suggest a compelling reason to buy one. It’s not clear how the “Tapestries” feature will work but it seems unlikely that this alone is a reason to purchase the Arc – which lacks a native content store – over other seven-inch budget tablets like Google’s Nexus 7, a new version of the Kindle Fire, or the iPad Mini that Apple is rumored to release this fall.

The E-Readers: Kobo Glo, $129.99; Kobo Mini, $79.99

The front-lit Kobo Glo ComfortLight (at right) is Kobo’s answer to the Barnes & Noble Nook with GlowLight and the front-lit Kindle that Amazon is expected to release Thursday. The Kobo Mini, which has a 5-inch e-ink touchscreen, is a budget, lightweight e-reader.

Specs, Glo: The Glo has a 6-inch e-ink XGA touchscreen – which, unlike a standard Pearl e-ink screen, offers high resolution and brightness controls. It has WiFi and 1 GB of usable storage space, enough to store about 1,000 ebooks, with the option to expand to 32GB with a micro SD card. Battery life is “over one month with WiFi and light turned off” and “over 55 hours of continuous use with light on,” although that’s all ”pending testing.”

Specs, Mini: The Mini has a 5-inch e-ink touchscreen and weighs 4.7 ounces, which Kobo says makes it the “smallest, lightest ultra-thin e-reader on the market.” It has WiFi and 1 GB of storage of non-expandable, usable storage space, enough to store about 1,000 ebooks. Battery life is “over two weeks with WiFi off.”

Content: Kobo says its digital bookstore contains nearly three million books,newspapers and magazines. Unlike Kindle, Kobo supports EPUB and Adobe DRM. Users can share notes and quotes to Facebook and Twitter and track and share what they’re reading with Kobo’s social reading service Reading Life.

Availability: The e-readers will be available in the U.S. in October.

Bottom line: A front-lit screen is quickly becoming a must-have on e-readers, with Amazon expected to release a front-lit Kindle on Thursday. Putting aside leaks about that Kindle, we can compare the Kobo Glo to Barnes & Noble’s Nook GlowLight: The Glo is $10 cheaper and has a better screen.

The Mini’s screen is an inch smaller than that of competing e-readers, but it’s unclear whether customers will actually think that’s a plus since e-readers aren’t that bulky in the first place. At $79.99, the Mini’s price is in line with the cheapest, ad-supported Kindle (unless Amazon announces price drops) and $20 cheaper than the basic Nook – and unlike the basic Kindle, it has a touchscreen.

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Why the Nook is failing: One chart, four reasons

Laura Hazard Owen — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:43:20 +0000

In Tuesday’s earnings report, Barnes & Noble broke out Nook sales for each quarter back to April 2011. Here they are:

*Nook revenue is comprised of Nook devices, digital content and accessories.

A holiday sales spike following the launch of the Nook Tablet in November 2011 hasn’t been enough to sustain the Nook business. And despite the launch of the front-lit Nook e-reader in April 2012, Nook business revenues are flat compared to this time last year.**

Microsoft is investing $300 million to spin off Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses into a new company. But these revenue figures suggest that’s a bad bet. (Note: Amazon doesn’t release Kindle revenue figures at all. Its ebook market share is higher than Nook’s, but we don’t know how Kindle revenues compare, though here’s our best guess. B&N’s relative openness makes it easier to write a post like this about the Nook business. Amazon offers a lot less to go on.)

E-reader problems

Barnes & Noble has had particular trouble with e-ink devices. The Nook Simple Touch e-reader (without GlowLight) had such poor holiday sales that B&N downgraded its full-year guidance. And in Tuesday’s earnings report, Barnes & Noble said that “production scaling issues” prevented it from filling orders for the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. That was a “missed opportunity,” CEO William Lynch acknowledged in an investor call following the report.

Nook with GlowLight may have great reviews from Consumer Reports and tech blogs and B&N may have beat Amazon (AMZN) in the launch of a front-lit e-reader. But that doesn’t matter if people can’t actually get their hands on one. Amazon is widely expected to release its front-lit Kindle this fall, and it appears B&N has already squandered its first-mover advantage.

Falling prices

Barnes & Noble also attributes falling Nook device revenues to price cuts. But the company is going to have to keep dropping prices on its e-readers and tablets to stay in line with Kindle and with budget tablets like Google’s Nexus 7 and the anticipated iPad Mini. It can’t increase prices to increase revenues.

International delays

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft are hoping to find salvation overseas. The Nook will launch in the U.K. this fall — first through an online storefront, nook.co.uk, though B&N promises that well-known retail partners will be announced soon. And Microsoft will spend $25 million a year for five years on international launches. But Kindle has already been in the U.K. for two years and recently partnered with British bookstore chain Waterstone’s to sell Kindles in its stores. Rakuten’s Kobo is already in the U.K., too, and both companies are expanding rapidly to other countries. Microsoft’s $25 million payments could help B&N catch up, but it is already far behind.

Slowing ebook sales

In Tuesday’s earnings call, B&N’s Lynch said apps and digital newsstand sales growth is “a little higher” than ebook growth. Lynch noted that book publishers are also seeing slower ebook sales (and here are Publishers Lunch’s recent findings on that). Nook’s ebook market share is still between 25 and 30 percent, the same as it was a year ago. It’s nice if apps and newsstand can drive some sales. But Barnes & Noble is going to have an even tougher time competing on those products than it does on ebooks. Apple and Android have the app market cornered, and digital magazines make up just a tiny sliver of overall magazine sales.

Resources

Barnes & Noble Q1 2013 earnings report (our post here)

Earnings call transcript

An earlier version of this article stated that Barnes & Noble’s app and digital newsstand *sales* are higher than ebook sales. That is incorrect and I apologize for the error. Lynch was referring to the growth rate, not overall sales numbers.

** Or they’re down: The Digital Reader points out that Barnes & Noble previously reported Nook sales of $277 million for the period ending July 30, 2011, but now says they were $191.4 million. A Barnes & Noble spokesperson said the discrepancy is due to accounting for agency pricing and the $191.4 million reflects the actual selling price of ebooks.

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Sony outs new Reader PRS-T2 with Evernote, Facebook sharing

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:08:27 +0000

Sony is striking back at Amazon’s Kindle with an updated Reader device, now available to order for $129. Aside from an improved viewing experience on the 6-inch e-Ink display, the Reader PRS-T2 includes redesigned touch buttons and Wi-Fi radio. The wireless connectivity isn’t just for getting content, however. Sony is betting more on the ability to share passages to Facebook friends and clip web pages directly to an Evernote account.

I’ve seen Facebook sharing of digital content from an e-reader in the past, but as an Evernote user, this feature intrigues me:

“For the first time, Reader is combining features from Evernote to allow users to save their favorite web content to enjoy any time. Evernote’s Web Clipper allows saving content with a click, and pages saved with Evernote Clearly are optimized for Reader’s crisp E-Ink display. Favorite passages can also be annotated on Reader and saved back to Evernote for viewing later on any smartphone, tablet or PC.”

Adding Evernote support is a smart move by Sony and I anticipate others — namely, Amazon and Barnes & Noble — to follow with expanded sharing or web clipping options. Moving content to the cloud for later consumption on nearly any device is just one of the benefits brought by Evernote and it makes sense: Why read a long web page on a device that’s not optimized for the activity when you can clip it and read later on a better display? Likewise, the reverse option is appealing: I often use Evernote Clearly to clip the text of web pages and could use the new Sony Reader to view them later.

With the PRS-T2, Sony is also throwing in a free voucher for an e-book copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone through a partnership with Pottermore, making the ~~Potter~~ pot, that much sweeter for its new Reader.

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When digital entrepreneurs go nuclear, literally

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:05:14 +0000

Nucleon, nuclear power car, once under development by Ford

When greentech investing was in sort of a bubble in 2007/2008, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a former web or computing entrepreneur to take on a crazy dream in the energy sector. But now, after the recession and a difficult year for greentech, it’s quite a bit less common. However that’s not stopping entrepreneur Russ Wilcox who is the former CEO and co-founder of display-maker E Ink, and according to Boston.com, has just joined next-gen nuclear startup Transatomic Power as its CEO.

Transatomic Power is a startup designing a new type of nuclear reactor that can run off of nuclear waste and also produce significantly less waste than the traditional lightwater nuclear reactor. Called the “Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor” or “WAMSR,” the reactor uses liquid fuel and molten salt — in contrast to solid fuel rods — and also has a more safe way to power down the system than a traditional lightwater nuclear reactor.

Happy, low waste, nuclear

In a TED talk video (see clip below) Transatomic co-founders Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie — both PhD students at MIT’s nuclear engineering department — point out how there’s been little innovation in the nuclear tech space over the years, partly because it’s hard for nuclear developers to adopt new technology in a world dominated by the lightwater nuclear reactor. Another reason for some slow periods of nuclear innovation was the nuclear incidents, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (and probably add Fukushima to that list).

However, decades ago, there was a brief era of innovation for nuclear in the U.S., says Massie, who showed a slide of a nuclear powered automobile once under development by Ford called the Nucleon. Nowadays, though, new nuclear technology will likely be deployed first outside of the U.S., particularly in China, where there are dozens of new nuclear sites proposed and under development.

Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor

Transatomic is only in the early stages of research and development. The company has raised less than a million dollars to start work on a prototype. Building full scale nuclear reactors can cost in the hundreds of millions to billions range.

Partly because of the high costs, and also because of the long time tables, there’s only a handful of new nuclear startups out there, and most focus on waste and safety says Dewan. TerraPower is a Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures-backed nuclear startup building a so-called traveling wave nuclear reactor that can also use waste fuel for fuel. Kurion is a startup developing nuclear waste cleanup tech; Hyperion is a startup developing a micro-scale nuclear reactor; and NuScale is another startup building small scale nuclear power.

Most next-gen nuclear technology is being developed by scientists and old-school power execs. But some former web and computing entrepreneurs have found their way to nuclear. Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures’ Nathan Myhrvold made their fortunes off of Microsoft. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has invested in nuclear fusion startup General Fusion. Perhaps the fortunes made off of computing and the web will be large enough to spark innovation in nuclear.

Images courtesy of Transatomic’s TED talk.

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Video: Reading in the dark with Amazon’s Kindle Touch lighted case

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:17:53 +0000

Before Barnes & Noble debuted its new Nook with GlowLight last week, I had already purchased a Kindle Touch. But I’ve been keeping my wife awake at night as I read in bed because my Touch has no light. I tried a third-party light with adjustable neck and clip, but I’m not a fan of changing the button cell batteries every so often. Instead, I opted for the official Kindle Touch case with integrated light.

At $59, this case is relatively expensive when you consider that I paid $99 for the Kindle Touch with Special Offers. The same case without a light is $39, but a third-party light can easily set you back another $20. The big advantage here is that the LED bulb draws power from the Kindle itself.

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

There’s no need to buy or change batteries for the light. I haven’t noticed a big drop in battery life since using this with my Kindle Touch, although it’s surely going to cause the e-reader to be recharged more often.

Overall, I love this purchase. I can still read in low-light or dark settings and not worry about keeping my wife awake. Actually, the more I think about it, she probably appreciates the new case even more than I do! Stay tuned as our Nook GlowLight review unit is on the way.

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