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Continue reading The Sharper Image announces Literati color e-reader

The Sharper Image announces Literati color e-reader originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just as the e-readers market seemed poised for a shakeout, Sharper Image–a store best known for its R2-D2 droids and ionic air purifier–has decided to jump in with a new e-reader.

Sharper Image has announced ‘Literati,’ a device with a color screen that will retail for $160. The device will be powered by the Kobo e-book store. Literati will have Wi-Fi connectivity, wireless book downloads and free reading apps.

The Literati has been created after an “extensive two-year design and development process,” says Sharper Image, and will ship nationwide in early October.

The Literati comes to market at a time when upstart e-readers are disappearing. Price wars by the big three e-reader makers–Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble and competition in the category has taken its toll on companies. Earlier this month, Foxit announced it will stop development on its eSlick e-reader. Plastic Logic canceled its plans to bring its e-reader to market, while Cool-er’s e-readers have been listed out of stock in the U.S. for months.

Meanwhile, bigger e-reader makers are ramping up their marketing efforts. Barnes & Noble has started aggressively selling the Nook reader in its stores. Amazon new, improved Kindle e-reader also seems to have turned into best-seller with Amazon racing to keep up with the demand.

Literati will wade into this fiercely competitive market. The color screen on the device is interesting. Though the company hasn’t offered any details about it, it is likely to be an LCD display. But the device doesn’t have a big price advantage over its rivals. The Literati costs just $20 less than the $190 Kindle.

What it has going for it is an impressive retail distribution network. The Literati will be available in stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, JC Penney, Kohl’s and Macy’s.

See Also:

• Plastic Logic Que E-Reader Turns Into Vaporware
• Kobo E-Reader First on iPad
• Upstart E-readers Fade to Black as Tablets Gain Momentum
• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• E-Readers Will Survive the Onslaught of Tablets

You might think it was already dead, but sales for the Barnes & Noble Nook (both B&N-branded hardware and multi-platform software apps) are booming.

The company’s web stores are doing great, too: B&N has a bigger share of the market in digital books (an estimated 20 percent) than it has in physical books.

That’s pretty good considering the Nook’s only been available for nine months, and the company still generates more revenue selling hardcovers and paperbacks than anyone, including Amazon.

Surprised? It’s easy to think about e-reading as a two-horse race, with Amazon’s austere text-centric Kindle facing off against Apple’s “magical” iPad, like PCs vs Macs or Protestants vs Catholics. And it’s true, Barnes & Noble lost money this past quarter, partly because it’s still sorting out its messy relations with its investors.

But Barnes & Noble is for real, and isn’t going anywhere. In the religious analogy, the Nook might be, I don’t know, Judaism, trying to adapt to a newer world while holding onto its traditional community.

Barnes & Noble has consistently gone for a hybrid strategy: providing touch and text, tightly integrating e-sales with its existing stores while also selling the Nook at Best Buy, letting its books be read on the Nook as well as other platforms. B&N’s apps for PC and Mac are arguably best-in-class (bonus points, too, for getting its Mac app out way before Amazon’s). The company is doubling down on (and rebranding) its apps for mobile devices. And it’s drawing on a solid base of neighborhood customer/members and university bookstores. Even as Amazon cuts its prices and diversifies its models to match the Nook, it can’t match Barnes & Noble’s deep reach into the real world.

According to B&N, its members with Nooks have increased their spending by 20%. The company’s building and staffing Nook boutiques in its stores. The idea is that you’ll go buy the Nook in the store, learn how to use it in the store, browse through titles (for free) in the store. And by the way, you might also want to buy some coffee, have lunch, pick up a photo album — all goods with better margins than books.

If the Kindle offers the promise of books anywhere at once and nowhere in particular, the Nook keeps alive the idea that books have a place. And the best place, Barnes & Noble thinks, is in one of its stores.

Photo credit: orb9220/Flickr

Related posts:

• 5 Things That Will Make E-Readers Better in 2010
• Nook Software Update Adds Web Browser, Chess
• Wi-Fi Only Nook For $150 in Best Buy
• 5 Things That Make Us Want Barnes & Noble’s Nook E-Reader

Sharp is going to launch its brand new e-reader in Japan this fall with US retail availability to follow by the end of the year. Riveting stuff, isn’t it? Well, the company’s President Mikio Katayama does his best to spice things up by proposing this device will aim “to rival the iPad,” and it may well sport a color LCD if earlier indications still hold true, but what’s really got us hot under the collar is the potential for 3D down the line. Katayama claims to have witnessed great enthusiasm for 3D — particularly when it comes to games — and posits it as a likely future direction for this new ebook reader. Multifunctional devices are what people want, he says, and since Sharp already has a 3D smartphone in the pipeline and a glasses-free 3D tablet display in the lab, we can’t see many technical hurdles to the realization of his vision. Let’s just hope his depth perception is accurate when it comes to measuring the interest in three-dee.

Sharp’s e-reader ready to ‘rival the iPad’ by year’s end, may have a 3D future originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Manufacturing upstart PocketBook is clearly still gung ho about e-readers, judging by the five new models it has announced will be released at IFA in September, which include a pair of entry-level ProBook 602 and 902 units, as well as the ProBook 603 and 903 premium units. The 60x designated models sport 6-inch screens, while the 90x models have a bigger 9.7-inch. All models will feature 2GB of internal storage, a Linux-based OS, and include WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. However, the higher-end versions also gain 3G connectivity and a Wacom touchscreen. More interesting and genre-bending though is the so-called “entertainment model” PocketBook IQ that will be available in three case color options, feature a 7-inch TFT color touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, and will run Android 2.0. Access to PocketBook’s own Bookland.net e-book store unfortunately rounds out all the details we know so far, but we’ll be sure to find out more once IFA gets going. Check out shots of the individual readers and get the full translated PR below.

Continue reading Pocketbook announces color touch screen Android powered e-reader and more

Pocketbook announces color touch screen Android powered e-reader and more originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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