Update: Sony now has an official press release up. It seems the $9.99 price will be for NY Times bestsellers and for new releases.
The big news is that the Sony Reader 600 Touch and Sony Reader 300 Pocket Edition will be formally announced tomorrow and will go on sale sometime in August.
Wall Street Journal has the scoop and is also confirming all of our speculating and the details we already know.
The big additions to what we already know (see Sony 300 details and Sony 600 Reader details) -
- Sony will cut prices of best selling ebook titles from $11.99 to $9.99.
- There will be no wireless support, although it is planned down the line.
- Available at the end of August.
- Will be sold at various retailers including Best Buy, Staples, Costco, Borders, Target and WalMart.
- Older models will be phased out.
- No music playing support on the Sony 300.
- Sony 300 will be available in Blue, Rose, and Silver.
- Current Sony owners will be offered a software for Mac compatibility.
- 5 adjustable font sizes on the Sony 600.
Sony’s website has a gallery of Sony 300 and Sony 600 images.
Also ZDNet has the scoop on Sony’s strategy to take on Amazon (Brennan Mullion) -
Brennan Mullin, vice president of Sony’s audio and digital reading divisions, said the $199 price point is an important one that will open up the market.
Mullin’s big pitch for Sony is that it has the retail distribution to get its e-readers in consumer hands to try. To Sony, the game isn’t the early adopters but the second and third waves of adopters.
Well, the $199 price point is pretty important. However, there’s such a huge feature gap between the Sony 300 and both the Sony 600 (touch, SD Card slot, bigger screen) and the Kindle 2 (whispernet, bigger screen, Read To Me, memory) that you really wonder about how torn customers are going to be and whether that’ll slow sales of the 300.
Filed under: eBook Reader Devices Tagged: | sony reader, sony reader vs kindle
