e-Book Echo: Sony Reader Available; Kindles Get Better; Nooks Expensive to Produce

reader

Our platform focus continues this fine Sunday with the e-Book Echo, our take on the week in the digital publishing world. The cool Sony Daily Edition Reader is now available for pre-order, with shipping sometime around the end of the year/ early next year. This Reader is the latest from Sony, and adds 3G to the mix along with the touch screen. The Daily Edition will set you back $400.

The Amazon Kindles got a firmware upgrade that offers native PDF support and longer battery life. The extended battery life is only obtained by global editions of the reader with HSPA radios. Those with the U. S. EVDO Kindles won’t see any battery life gains. The native PDF support is a significant new feature, especially for business folks who like to take work documents along. To better handle PDF viewing, Kindles will now support screen rotation for landscape viewing.

We have seen a rash of e-book reader announcements over the past few months, with a lot of different companies rushing to make readers. These companies might want to listen to Barnes & Noble, as its inability to meet heavy Nook orders is resulting in a ramping up of production capability. This is a very expensive process, and the company has indicated this might hurt future earnings. Electronic readers may be a hot ticket, but they are not cheap to produce.

loading

Comments have been disabled for this post