Sony's New e-Readers

If this news from engadget is true, the new Sony e-readers will rock.

The pictures look like they were taken during an internal presentation. So we don't know if this is the real deal but it only makes sense that Sony soon commercializes new and better reading devices responding to the recent launch of Amazon's Kindle 3, which is using the new E Ink Pearl display giving the reader 50% better contrast (You can check this article on iReader Review to see the difference between Kindle 2's and Kindle 3's displays).

On the picture above, you can clearly read 6 very interesting characteristics of the new Sony readers:

• Full clear touch screen
• Multiple language dictionaries
• Faster page turn
• Increased built-in storage capacity
• Intelligent zoom
• Enhanced battery life

Of those six, three made my heart beat faster:

Full clear touch screen: No additional layer over the E Ink display means that the glare that the touchscreen devices were cursed with won't be there anymore. So the reader won't have to hold her device in strange angles to avoid the nearest source of light.

Multiple language dictionaries: This is awesome! I read in a few different languages and I'm not at all lazy about checking words or terms that I'm not familiar with. This especially in Spanish which happens to be my weakest language.

Enhanced battery life: This is not as important as the two above however longer battery life is always a good enhancement. Furthermore 25% of improvement is quite significant.

The remaining three characteristics are good to have but I, personally, am not too excited about them:

Faster page turn: Page turns never bothered me that much. Once the user gets used to her device, it becomes automatic to click the page-turn button a few words before the end of a page so that right after the last few words are read the page turns.

Increased built-in capacity: 1200 e-books in 2GB of memory. This is a significant investment in terms of books (I know there a lot of public domain ones). I've yet to come close to fill my device's memory with my e-books, web articles and work-related documents. For me it's a matter of organization. I usually get rid of the Web articles and work documents once I'm done with them.

Intelligent zoom: I have to see this working before being able to comment about it. I usually don't read PDFs so I'd better leave that uncommented but it seems like it is a good feature to read newspapers and magazines.

E-Books and E-Readers This Holiday Season

Did you get an e-Reader or an e-Book as Christmas present this year? It looks like they were popular among shoppers.

Amazon announced that Kindle became the most gifted item ever in their history. The fact that Barnes & Noble's Nook has had shipment problems improved Amazon's sales figures naturally (I heard that Barnes & Nobles offered $100 to anyone who doesn't receive his/her Nook on time, which is a good compensation, I think).

There was another important news in the same Amazon announcement. For the first time in their history, on Christmas day, Amazon sold more e-Books than paper books. Without a doubt, this is a milestone. E-Readers and e-Books are gaining acceptance rapidly. Even though Amazon doesn't release the sales figures for Kindle, it is estimated that 60% of the e-Book readers are Kindles, in the USA. Sony e-Readers come second with 35%. We'll see, in 2010, what kind of market share will Nook be able to steal from Kindle and Sony.

Kindle International Edition

It had been rumored for a while and today came the official announcement: Ladies and gents! Amazon Kindle 2 is now internationally available in 100+ countries (but bizarrely not in Canada - anybody knows why?).

As of today, you can pre-order it from the co.uk site for $279 and Amazon will begin shipping them on 19th October. Even though the device is current sold from the .com site, a UK store is forthcoming. Currently the list of UK publishers whose books are available to Kindle 2 users include Atlantic Books, Bloomsbury, Canongate, Faber & Faber, Hachette, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Penguin, Profile Books, Quercus, Simon & Schuster and Wiley. It looks like the talks between Amazon and Random House are ongoing so Random House is not currently on the list. The number of available titles is supposed to be more than 250.000.

According to The Register, the Kindle international edition seems to be using GSM technology only. If this is true, the Kindle International may not be working everywhere in the world. Furthermore, the UK coverage map resembles 3's network, even though the operator denied having an agreement with Amazon.

What's this fee of $1.99 per book about?

Since the announcement, there has been a big debate about the international prices, especially about the $1.99 that the international users are supposed to pay per book downloaded. It turns out that this fee is payed only by the US Kindle users buying books outside the USA. International users won't pay that fee even if they use their Kindles outside their registered countries. I'm sure, that's precisely the reason why the international titles' prices will range between $11.99 and $13.99 rather than %9.99 like in the US. It looks like the extra fee is bundled with the book price for the non-US customers already.

As you can guess, it was all about releasing the Kindle 2 well before the holiday season. Q4 has always been the busiest quarter for Amazon so they wanted release the device early in October. Is that a half-baked solution? Will there be a lot of confusion about where to buy it and for how much? We'll see it pretty soon. In the meantime, competition is good for us, the consumers. I believe Sony's e-readers are better devices but we'll see if Amazon can break Sony's market dominance outside the US.