There are lots of changes in eReader World and most are linked to the magic that is the iPad.
Sony Reader Pocket Edition priced at $169 for 2 weeks
The Digits Blog of the Wall Street Journal starts off with an article on Sony’s $30 price cut on the Sony Reader Pocket Edition – It really is a good value at $169. Do check my kindle vs Sony reader pocket edition review post to see how they stack up.
It’s a 2 week discount -
Sony’s $30 discount only lasts through April 4, just in time for the April 3 arrival of Apple’s $499 and up iPad in stores on April 3.
It’ll be interesting to see whether this sparks a pricing war. Forrester, rather predictably, use this as an excuse to expound on their sub $100 eReader theory -
Forrester analyst James McQuivey predicts that single-purpose e-reader prices will drop to as low as $99 by next year.
“When you are competing against multi-function devices, you must have a clear signal as to why a single-purpose device is desirable. A price of $99 would be a very strong signal,” he said.
Apple starts snapping up the larger Independent Publishers
Apparently there are large independent publishers and they are beginning to sign up with Apple. Amazon has allegedly told independent publishers that signing up for the Agency Model means Amazon will stop selling their books. It doesn’t seem to be working.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (affectionately known as TUAW) write about Perseus Books Group’s decision to sign-up with Apple -
Perseus also distributes books from 330 smaller presses, the most notable being Harvard Business School Press and Zagat. Similar to Apple’s deal with app developers and the other large publishers who have already signed on, Apple will allow Perseus to set prices for their ebooks while Apple will receive a 30% cut.
Perseus is also the largest distributor of independent publishers and it might be too big for Amazon to take action against.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the iPad doesn’t become a huge channel for ebooks. A lot of the smaller publishers might regret getting Amazon angry.
Apple iBooks’ text to speech raising concerns
Christian Science Monitor wonders – Is it legal for ebooks to be audible?
At other places on the Internet (that now escape my browsing memory) people argue the opposite – Is it legal for Publishers to deny text to speech to blind readers?
It would not be a surprise if Publishers gave Apple allowance to use text to speech as a means to make the iPad and iPad ebooks more attractive than Kindle ebooks. It’s so much Divide and Conquer you expect the East India Company to have a hand.
iRiver Story debuts at retail stores in Romania
The iRiver Story had launched in Romania via eMag, the largest online Romanian store, around 3 months ago. It’s now available in the 250 store Germanos network. It’s available for 999 lei and comes with 101 Romanian Novels.
iRiver are happily playing up the Kindle vs iRiver angle -
Two months ago, representatives of Skin, distributor of iRiver Story in Romania told Wall-Street that iRiver Story sales could reach 10,000 units at least, and that until mid year, the battle will be between Kindle (the e-book reader available via Amazon) and iRiver Story.
Just how crazy has the JesusTablet worship gotten?
Exhibit A: Wired are running an article with 13 people talking about the Rise of the Tablet. Ladies and Gentleman, hold your horses – We haven’t even had a launch yet.
Here’s a comment from someone who designs games for the iPhone -
Forget the netbook. It’s a slow, clunky piece of junk. Do I want to look like the guy who couldn’t afford a real computer or the guy who went to the future and brought back a device that’s as cool as I imagine I am?
That’s beautiful all by itself.
Here’s another comment. This one went totally over my head -
Ten years from now, we will look back at the tablet and see it as an end point, not a beginning.
The tablet may turn out to be the final stage of an extraordinary era of textual innovation, powered by 30 years of exponential increases in computation, connection, and portability.
An extraordinary era of textual innovation?
Kevin Kelly says -
This window tablet injects some Africa into computers. It overthrows the tyranny of the keyboard. Gestures are king. Swoosh your fingers to scroll, wave your arms as with a Wii, shake or tilt it. Celebrate its embodiment. The craftsmanship of this device will matter.
We’ll spend hours holding it, caressing it, stroking its magic surface, watching it. The feel of its surface, the liquidity of its flickers, the presence or lack of its warmth, the quality of its build, the temperature of its glow will come to mean a great deal to all of us.
Mr. Kelly should consider writing romance novels – Anyone who can use feel, flicker, warmth, glow, caress, stroke, and presence to describe a gadget would probably make romance novels spontaneously combust.
Nicholas Negroponte thinks one-handedness is the big advantage tablets have. He obviously misses the fact that it’s impossible to get away with holding a device in one hand when it uses multi-touch technology and weighs as much as a hardcover.
Chris Anderson of Free fame manages to use the Kindle as the reason that Tablets are the future of Media -
Tablets are the future of media — if they become ubiquitous.
The Kindle shows that people are willing to pay for specialized devices if they can give them the flexibility to have the content they want when they want it.
Bigger than a phone, funner than a laptop, more cuddly than a Kindle. I think they’re going to sell like hotcakes.
Have just one question for Mr. Anderson – Have you ever really cuddled with a Kindle?
Unfortunately, the other contributors keep their wits about them and Gina Bianchini of Ning even manages to keep it short and sweet.
This takes the Cake – $8 billion App Market by 2015
Michael Wolf at GigaOm decides he shall outdo the iPad cuddlers and magic surface strokers -
The paid web tablet app market will grow to top $8 billion by 2015 from just $183 million in 2010.
In 5 years the paid app market for Tablets is going to grow 43 times?
Note that he doesn’t even count advertising revenue from apps and subscription revenue or content sales (kindle books, netflix). Which means he expects the overall app economy to be much bigger than $8 billion a year.
Lest we accuse Mr. Wolf of being unrealistic only about apps he also predicts web tablets to be a 43 million units a year market.
How do we stay balanced towards the JesusTablet?
When you have people alternating between -
- Proclaiming eReaders are dead.
- Predicting 43 million tablet sales a year.
- Verbally molesting the iPad.
- Making obviously wrong claims i.e. Tablets are great for one-handed use.
It’s difficult to figure out what to think of the iPad. There isn’t anything it could possibly do to impress us if we already expect it to completely transform everything.
Thankfully it releases in 10 days and we can have actual facts replace all these flights of fancy.
Filed under: iSlate Apple Slate Tagged: | ereader news, ipad vs ereader
