The Times of London
is reporting that the Taiwanese computer company, Asus, renowned for its affordable netbooks, is about to enter the e-book race with a lower-priced unit than the popular Kindle.
According to the Times, Asus will release two models, with the lowest priced at about 100 pounds. It isn't clear if Asus will link the technology to a publishing distribution system or to other content --- the Kindle is, of course, an extension of Amazon.com and has deals with several print organizations.
But what is a major development is the format of the Asus unit: full-colour and hinged to emulate the reading experience. One of those two screens can be used as a keyboard.
With Sony readying a new unit at less than $200, and Plastic Logic in the wings, the race is going to heat up in the months to come. Still, recent research from Forrester indicates mass appeal depends very much on a much lower price point, no more than $100 and as little as $50.
The New York Times reports tonight that Amazon will unveil a larger-screen Kindle later this week, an important move for the newspaper industry looking for alternative forms of distribution that emulate the print experience.
The Times reports on the wave of electronic reading devices in the wings but notes Amazon, with its Kindle already in hundreds of thousands of hands in the U.S., ready to move to a third version with a larger screen.
Clearly the opportunity for newspapers is to move to e-readers and other mobile devices, along with PCs, instead of the high-cost printing and distribution in place. This is a particular attraction in parts of the United States where many newspapers now are unprofitable but within attractive media markets. The key, though, is to develop e-readers capable of more than black and white display. For that we will have to wait some time. That's an acute issue for advertisers, but also for replicating the photojournalism and design attributes.
The challenge many cite in the Times article is the c
The Economist thinks the issue is strong enough to make it a leader: The emergence of the e-reader and its possible benefit for the newspaper.
The magazine chronicles the development of the second version of the Kindle and the other devices new and pending, and it weighs into the should-news-be-free debate by suggesting that what's needed is a storefront like Amazon to retail the newspaper to the e-reading set.
Indeed, it presents an intriguing notion: Might Apple enter the fray? It notes how Steve Jobs believes that "reading is dead," but how he's dismissed other things in the past similarly just before leaping in.
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