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Two upcoming e-readers demonstrated Wednesday could force changes in the market. They are Plastic Logic's reader and British firm Interead's Cool-er.
Plastic Logic's reader, which has a much larger screen than the Amazon Kindle, targets business readers. The Cool-er has the same 6-inch screen size as the Amazon Kindle 2, but it's priced at almost $100 less. Both devices were among the items demonstrated at the D: All Things Digital conference held by The Wall Street Journal.
Plastic Logic's Reader
Plastic Logic's reader has a screen measuring 6.4 by 8.53 inches with 960 by 1,260 pixel resolution. Overall, it measures 8.5 by 11 inches -- the same size as a sheet of A4 paper. It weighs less than 16 ounces.
Aimed at the business reader, it offers a touchscreen interface and lets users directly load and manage Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Word and Excel documents and PDFs.
The device is charged through a USB port, and Plastic Logic is building proprietary software for it, spokesperson Jonelle Hester said.
Plastic Logic is partnering with Ingram Digital and publications like the Financial Times and USA Today, whose content it will offer, Hester told TechNewsWorld. Other target partners are The New York Times, Fortune and Forbes. It does not employ digital rights management.
Later this year, Detroit Media Partnership, which manages the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, will pursue a test program in distributing content to readers using the Plastic Logic device and the Amazon Kindle.
So Clean, So Green
Plastic Logic's device will be made entirely of -- what else? -- plastic. Its manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, will work on the electronics.
At the conference, Plastic Logic announced that its reader will have cellular wireless capabilities in addition to WiFi, but Hester said the company has not yet chosen a carrier.
"The main thing we showed at [the conference] was the user interface," she added. The launch date for the product is early 2010, probably in January, according to Plastic Logic.
The company has not announced its pricing, but "we do want to be competitive," Hester said.
Cool-er Heats Things Up
The Cool-er e-reader demonstrated at D: All Things Digital by its manufacturer, Interead, measures 7.2 by 4.61 by 0.43 inches deep and has a 6-inch screen. It weighs about 6.3 ounces and has a screen resolution of 170 pixels per inch, according to Interead's figures.
The device runs on Linux software, has 1 GB of storage and 128 MB of RAM. Users can extend the memory up to 4 GB with an SD card.
It uses a Samsung S3C2440 ARM (Nasdaq: ARMHY) 400 MHz processor. The battery has a life of 8,000 pages on a single charge, and the device is compatible with both Macs and PCs.
The Cool-er e-reader loses out to the Kindle and the Plastic Logic reader in terms of wireless capabilities -- Interead's device has none. However, at $249, it is $110 cheaper than the Kindle 2.
It accepts documents in JPEG, PDF, TXT and EPUB formats, in eight languages: English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese.
The Cool-er uses Adobe Content Server 4 for digital rights management. It offers books from its Coolerbooks.com Web site, which claims more than 750,000 titles at discount prices.
Amazon's Kindle Devices
Both of these e-book readers will have to fight off Amazon's Kindle line in order to entice buyers. The Kindle 2 is larger than the Cool-er, about four ounces heavier, and more expensive. However, it does have wireless capabilities.
Many e-books on Amazon.com are available at around $9.99 -- generally cheaper than on the Coolerbooks site, where prices range from $8.79 for Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point to 22.36 for Wicked Prey by John Sanford.
The Kindle DX loses out to the Plastic Logic reader in terms of screen size and its weight -- the DX has a smaller screen size and a heftier weight.
Amazon's take on the newcomers: "We aren't focused on other companies, we are focused on our customers and giving them the best possible experience," spokesperson Cinthia Portugal told TechNewsWorld.
Nevertheless, the new devices could reshape the market.
"You're going to see a lot of new products and posturing and price wars," Laura DiDio, principal at research firm ITIC, told TechNewsWorld.
"A year from now, I expect that prices on e-readers will decline significantly, and that's a good thing for customers," she said.
