Archive for e-reader
Kindle Fire HD and Amazon App Store Expands to Hundreds of Markets
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Amazon has just announced that they are now making its Kindle Fire HD 7 and 8.9 tablets available in over 170 different countries. The company also mentioned that its Android App Market will be available in over 200 countries.
The Kindle Fire HD WIFI tablets will be available to pre-order starting today. The first shipment will be dispatched on June 13th and the international crowd will find a lot more viability in accessing content with the entire app store now available. To celebrate this move, Amazon is giving a few apps away for free on May 23-24. Fruit Ninja and Cut the Rope Experiments could be incentive for people to gravitate towards these devices.
App Developers will have the ability in hundreds of new markets to submit Android apps into the Amazon store. Amazon curates it fairly vigorously, and not everything is accepted, like Google Play. Recently, Amazon announced its virtual currency, Amazon Coins. This allows for micro transactions within the apps and can even be used to buy a paid version of an app.
“Kindle Fire HD is the #1 best-selling item in the world for Amazon since its launch, and we’re thrilled to make it available to even more customers around the globe today,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Not only does Kindle Fire feature advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our content ecosystem, great email and browsing and top-rated customer service, we hope people around the world will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best tablet for an incredible price.”
Amazon is in the business of severely discounting the hardware to make up for digital sales. Over a million ebooks are currently in the system and in the last year Amazon has started to offer exclusives. Amazon Prime members get a free ebook every month for buying into the $79.99 package, which also gives free movies and free shipping.
The e-Reader and e-Paper Outlook for 2013-2014
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Sid Display Week is happening right now in Vancouver, BC. This conference mainly showcases the latest screen technology for smartphones, televisions, advertising, and, of course, e-readers. We talked to some of the leading companies today and got their outlook on how the current e-reader landscape is shaping up and where the industry might go later this year and into 2014.
The e-reader industry is not as alluring as it once was. Over 24 million e-readers will be shipped this year, according to E Ink and Freescale Semi-Conductors. The competition and radical price-drops in this sector are benefiting customers with low-prices of some really quality stuff, but it’s dissuading many companies from entering in or getting out.
Neonode, Mirasol, Plastic Logic, Pixel Qi, Bridgestone, and many other companies have entered the competitive landscape of e-readers over the course of the last few years. Almost all of them have abandoned making devices and either got out completely or turned to licensing their technology to other companies. Bridgestone and Plastic Logic got out of making devices and abandoned the sector altogether. Pixel Qi turned to licensing its plastic display screens to government, military, and private businesses. Even the head boss Mary Lou Jepsen jumped ship and is now working for Google as the Head of the Display Division. Qualcomm decided against participating in the e-reader space and instead is working on smartphones and wearable technology. Neonode has something cooking in its RND labs and announced a new IR display screen, but details are minimal.
E Ink, the e-paper found in almost all of the current generation e-readers on the market, is optimistic. Most companies that make readers based on their technology will continue to do so for the next few years. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, Pocketbook, Ectaco, and Bookeen remained committed to the spirit of digital reading devices.
So how will e-readers change in the next few years? Freescale thinks that many companies will begin to shift towards its i.MX6 Solo processors. The chip has 256 KB of L2 Cache and compatible with 32 bit DDR3 memory chips. It will provide e-readers with faster page turns and a better experience than the current crop of i.MX5 processors that are getting a little bit long in the tooth. We will also continue to see larger screens come down the pipe, as evident in the new Sony 13.3 inch e-reader. It is geared towards academics and PDF enthusiasts. E Ink verified with us that the new flexible display panel can be tailored towards any size, it depends on the cut. So we may see a resurgence in 9.7 inch e-readers that have the weight reduced significantly.
Onyx Boox, Qualcomm, Yota, and E Ink think that secondary e-paper screens are the way the industry is moving right now. Google Glasses is the poster child for wearable technology and the internet is rife with Apple iWatch rumors. The truth is, e-paper watches have been around since the Pebble captured the Kickstater imagination by offering a pseudo e-paper experience and pairing it with your smartphone. Onyx, Yota, and Mirasol all think that secondary displays on the back of your phone is the way to go. E Ink formed a relationship with Japan based Seiko a few years ago. They have been pumping out e-paper watches for awhile, and the technology is fairly refined.
It will be interesting to see if the broad non-urban type of customer would adopt a secondary display on their phone. Potential uses include Maps, Google Now, Text Messages, and other features. There is an air of uncertainty at SID on the customers, but vendors are expressing a ton of interest.
There is one major trend this year at SID in relation to e-paper: advertising. We talked to many small companies involved in digital signage, and they are all marketing e-paper price tags, screens merged together for retail signs, freezer tags, and grocery store fare. E Ink announced two major new technologies at SID, and focused on this emerging sector. I think the company is realizing it can’t have all of its eggs in one basket and is branching away from its bread and butter market. Many small companies have told us that grocery stores and retail are responding in a big way. The tech is still too expensive to replace paper in the short term and only the majors can afford it. Still, there is something alluring at being able to update billboards and price tags on the fly. There is strong WIFI integration with this technology, so you can change the price without having to replace them manually. If it was raining outside, you could set a dynamic program to reduce the prices on umbrellas. Lord knows we need them in Vancouver.
To sum it all up, e-readers will remain relevant for the next two years. They will become faster and more responsive. There will also be more choice in the different sizes of screens available, as many vendors are starting to deviate from the six inch standard. You will start to see more e-paper in the retail and produce environment, and secondary display screens will start to emerge.
Pocketbook Touch Lux e-Reader – First Look
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During the SID Display Week in Vancouver BC, we got our hands on one of the new e-readers that Pocketbook announced a few weeks ago. The Pocketbook Touch Lux is the new kid on the block, and we go hands-on to check out what this device brings to the table.
The Pocketbook Touch Lux features the same HD E Ink Pearl display found on the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo. The exact resolution is 1024×758 and has a front-lit display, which is optimal for reading in the dark. It also has 256 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal memory, and a SD card support for up to 32 GB of memory. Battery life should be good up to 7,000 page turns. It also has an audio jack so you can listen to audiobooks and music.
Sometimes Pocketbook e-Readers feel particularly slow. I have a feeling that most of the internal components are selected from Ricks Restorations bone yard. If you have ever seen the show, it features a slew of crazy characters in Las Vegas that buy and repair vintage items and make them as good as new. Regular viewers of the show are familiar with his bone yard, where rusted items go to die and are cannibalized for parts for existing projects. It feels like Pocketbook paid a visit to said bone yard and randomly selected old computers and beat up monitors and threw them into the Lux.
Still, there are some cool features found on this e-reader. Pocketbook borrowed a page out of Kobo’s playbook by adopting its own statistical ebook menu. It shows you how many books or pages you have turned. You can also share some of your reading habits with your friends via Facebook.
First Look at the Tolino Shine e-Reader
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The Tolino Shine features a six inch e-ink Pearl display with a resolution of 1024×758 pixels. You will be able to garner around seven weeks of battery life and store 2,000 ebooks on it with 4 GB of storage. If you need more memory, you can upgrade it via the Micro SD card. It primarily will read EPUB and PDF files. It does have support for Adobe Digital Editions, so you can read books you purchased from other stores. It will also be running on the Google Android operating system. This e-Reader stemmed from a partnership between Thalia , Weltbild, Hugendubel, Bertelsmann Club, and Deutsche Telekom.
At Sid Display Week 2013, we got our hands on this little unit and give you a first impressions of the device and what you can expect on a general level if you purchase one. This device certainly won’t compete with the Amazon Kindle, as intended. Instead, it offers an innovative feature that appeals to indie bookstores and publishers. When the device is sold, there is the ability to link in a specific bookstore on the e-Reader. This means, if Thalia sells in their shop, they can attach their own bookstore on it, if another company sells it, they can link to whatever digital bookstore of their choosing.
Hands-On with the Sony 13.3 Inch Prototype e-Reader
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Sony announced a new 13.3 inch e-reader last week that uses technology the company developed internally and in conjunction with E Ink Holdings. The new Sony e-Paper reader will seriously appeal to anyone that has lamented that their PDF reading and editing experiences have been sub-par on six inch devices. At SID Display Week in Vancouver, we caught up with Giovanni Mancini, the head of RND at E Ink, to check out the new Sony e-Reader.
This was the lightest device I have ever played with in the history of e-readers. The 13.3 inch screen is beguiling to behold and you would figure from looking at it that it would weigh significantly more than the Kindle DX. In truth it weighs only 12.6 oz, compared to the Kindle DX, which weighs a hefty 18.9 oz. The e-paper screen glides like a feather when dropped, as I found out.
The screen itself is quite respectable in terms of resolution and pixel density. The resolution on the display is 1200×1600 with 150 PPI. It is dubbed Mobius by E Ink and the company is actively shopping it around to the who’s who list of the e-reader world. The main attraction is using the active digitizer and interacting with complex PDF documents. You can edit documents by jotting down your own handwritten notes, or even highlight passages to go back to later. The large screen display will simply give you the best PDF experience you have ever had on an e-reader. I have personally reviewed over 83 different e-readers since launching Good e-Reader in 2009, and this was the first one to give me a quality PDF experience. I have received emails from airline pilots, heads of research divisions, and publishers about what device they should buy to read their PDF Files. I would implore everyone to buy this Sony one when it comes out; it changes the game. I don’t normally gush about things like this, but when it comes to school, work, newspapers, gaming guides, and technical PDF documents, this is solid.
The software right now is quite buggy, and we often found ourselves hitting a function key many times before the feature loaded up. The digitizer pen has a small button it that allows you to erase things when pressed. One of my concerns, along with some of the other media people there, was that the “erase” button was placed where you naturally grip the pen. This may result in you pressing down on it during your natural tendency to grip the stylus like a pencil. We noticed that when you are holding down the button, you can’t launch any commands or click on any of the GUI buttons. This forces you to write on the e-reader in a very unconventional way that may take some getting used to.
Nook Simple Touch Tipped to Get Email and Web-Browser June 1st
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Barnes and Noble is intending on releasing a new firmware update for the Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with Glowlight this June. The 1.50 update is poised to bring a new email client and a new internet browser. The e-readers themselves have a web-browser buried in the search function, but most people were completely unaware of it. The ebook store is also undergoing a refresh and will have a new UI.
The Nook line of e-readers has seen a wider appeal as of late, due to the recent price reductions in the UK and US. Google Play on the Nook line of tablets has been drawing industry wide attention and many users we talk to are claiming they are buying one for the first time, or switching back to the brand. B&N is hoping that a more accessible e-reader is will appeal to people on the fence.
Barnes and Noble has always had internet browsers in the e-readers and I will bet that they will not tweak it very much with the public release. A solid email client should appeal to people who are in book clubs, or need to check in to work every so often. The Nook line of e-readers does run the Google Android operating system, so adding a few new features is really not that hard.
The Amazon Kindle Keyboard Getting Harder to Find
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The Amazon Kindle Keyboard has received a number of new firmware updates over the course of the last two years, most notably parental controls. The e-reader is getting fairly long in the tooth, when compared to the Kindle Touch and Kindle Paperwhite. With a product refresh coming at the end of the summer, this device is getting harder to find. Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and many other retailers are now showing this reader as sold out.
The Kindle Keyboard was a fairly popular model when it came out in 2011, when it was known as the Kindle Graphite. At the time, competition in the e-reader space was fairly poor and customers loved the ability to type notes on the physical keyboard. These days, people want touchscreens or virtual screens. The Kindle 4, Paperwhite, and Kindle Touch are the three devices Amazon is marketing, and it really looks like the Keyboard model is officially discontinued.
New E Ink Sony 13 Inch e-Reader Caught on Video
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Sony and E Ink announced this week that they have developed a new 13 inch e-reader. This new device uses a screen called Mobius, which is making the rounds in Japan and SID in Vancouver next week. At a recent event in Japan, Diginfo filmed a brief hands-on of the device, which should give you a sense on how it handles PDF files and making highlights/annotations.
The Sony E Ink Slate will feature a capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1,200 x 1,600 pixels and 150 DPI. This new slate will be aimed at people who need to read technical PDF documents and edit them on the fly with the accompanied stylus. It will also have bundled WIFI and the ability to increase the memory via the Micro SD card from the 4 GB of internal memory.
The one important thing to bear in mind is that this is not the finalized product. It is a prototype that should be available this summer, and by then there will be firmware tweaks and other features will be greatly enhanced. Still, large screen e-readers have the ability to gain some strong traction for people enamored with technical PDF documents.
Top Publishers Donate eBooks to Get London Reading Campaign
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Hachette UK, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House have donated a selection of top children’s titles to support the Get London Reading literacy campaign. This is a big event with Barnes and Noble and the London Evening Standard aiming to make reading more accessible and affordable across the UK and includes a donation of 1,000 NOOK Simple Touch e-Readers to Beanstalk, a national literacy charity that recruits and supports reading volunteers in schools.
NOOK has worked with Hachette UK, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House to contribute the books, which will be loaded onto the 1,000 Nook e-Readers that B&N is donating to reading volunteers from Beanstalk. The titles donated are some of the UK’s most popular children’s books. The Beanstalk literacy volunteers will use the NOOKs at key schools with high levels of illiteracy across the UK.
Victoria Barnsley, CEO and Publisher, HarperCollins UK and International said: “At HarperCollins, we are passionate about extending the joy of reading and have long supported Beanstalk’s amazing work promoting literacy in schools. We are delighted to be in partnership with NOOK on this fantastic project to Get Reading.”
Gail Rebuck, Chair and CEO, The Random House Group said: “Random House has supported Beanstalk for nine years and the Get Reading campaign since its launch in 2011. Today marks a key milestone for the campaign and we have donated 10 fantastic ebooks from authors who are supporting the NOOK partnership including Jacqueline Wilson, James Patterson and Bear Grylls that will capture the imaginations of young people and support Beanstalk volunteers who are working to improve literacy levels in schools across the UK.”
George Walkley, Head of Digital, Hachette UK said: “We are absolutely delighted to be involved in the Get Reading campaign. We believe that reading is the foundation for a happy and healthy life. Books in every format enhance the lives of children and, as more and more children now read on e-readers, this initiative with NOOK is a very valuable addition to this great campaign.”
Google Play Books Update Allows eBook Uploads in EPUB and PDF
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Google Play Books has just released a new update today for iOS and Android that will greatly enhance its relevance. Google now allows users to upload their own ebooks in EPUB or PDF format into Google Drive or via their new Uploading Tool. Once the books are stored in the cloud, you can read your books within the main Google Books app.
Google has adopted a new strategy to open up its book ecosystem to users who have their own ebooks (without DRM) to read. You can download books from anywhere on the internet and upload them to your Google account. You can then make notes, annotations, and sync all of your data. This is very useful to people who have adopted smartphones and tablets in their lifestyle.
The new Google Play Books app is available via the Good e-Reader APP store and iTunes.
Amazon Confirms the Acquisition of Liquavista Color e-Paper
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Samsung has not been doing much with the Liquavista color e-paper it purchased in 2011 and instead has been focusing on screens for its tablet and smartphone line. The company has been actively trying to sell off its investment to companies for the last two years, with not many showing interest. Amazon has confirmed today that it has acquired the technology and we are likely to see a true color e-reader within the next calendar year.
I spoke to Kurt Petersdorff, the Commercial Director of Liquavista, around a year ago to find out what made this e-paper different than e-Ink. The essence of Electrowetting technology is that it is highly scalable. From a manufacturing point of view, it is easy for existing LCD plants to incorporate Electrowetting into its process. It is basically the same entire procedure to create the screen, except instead of using Liquid Crystals they use a different fill. One of the huge benefits of Liquavista technology is that it is flexible, which means it is much more robust. It is similar to the same type of display that LG uses in the Wexler Flex One. If you have ever dropped an iPad or an iPhone, you know the LCD glass breaks rather easily because it is extremely inflexible.
Amazon confirmed the acquisition by email today, stating “We are always looking for new technologies we may be able to incorporate into our products over the long term. The Liquavista team shares our passion for invention and is creating exciting new technologies with a lot of potential. It’s still early days, but we’re excited about the possibilities and we look forward to working with Liquavista to develop these displays.”
Below is an exclusive video where Samsung and Liquavista talked about the e-reader industry and what their technology actually does. We will be hearing a lot more about this in the coming months, as inevitable rumors of new Amazon products gain traction.
Sony 13 Inch E-Ink Slate Puts the Emphasis on e-Reading
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Sony has just unveiled a new flexible 13 inch e-Ink Slate that should make waves in the educational and consumer e-reading fields. One of the things that this new device has going for it is the slim build. It is only 6.8mm thick, which makes the overall profile slimmer than most smartphones, like the iPhone.
The Sony e-Ink Slate will feature a capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1,200 x 1,600 pixels and 150 DPI. This new slate will be aimed at people who need to read technical PDF documents and edit them on the fly with the accompanied stylus. It will also have bundled WIFI and the ability to increase the memory via the Micro SD card from the 4 GB of internal memory.
There is a severe lack of large screen e-readers on the market since the Amazon Kindle DX was discontinued last year. There are a few brands, such as Onyx Boox, Pocketbook, and Icarus that market these types of e-readers, but they are often found wanting in performance and cost a bundle. Sony says it will be released this year and should appeal to the demographic of people that absolutely need a large screen and long battery life.
Get Your Virtual Currency with Amazon Coins – Now Live
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Amazon announced back in February that it was intending to launch a new virtual currency program, called Amazon Coins. This allows the public to forgo using traditional greenbacks and instead using coin stacks. If you tend to use the Amazon Android Market or have a Kindle Fire, this is something you may want to look at. You can buy in-game features, enhancements, or just use your coins to buy a paid app. All existing Amazon users now have 500 free coins, which carries a monetary value of $5.00. You can purchase more coins with various incremental values, and get discounts the more you spend. App Developers are encouraged to integrate coins into their Amazon apps and will earn 70% commission on any in-app or app purchase customers make with coins.
“Today we are giving Kindle Fire owners $5 worth of Coins to spend on new apps and games, or to purchase in-app items, such as recipes in iCookbook, song collections in SongPop, or mighty falcon bundles in Angry Birds Star Wars. And with discounts of up to 10% when you buy Coins, this is a great way for customers to save money when they buy apps, games and in-app items,” said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. “We will continue to add more ways to earn and spend Coins on a wider range of content and activities-today is Day One for Coins.”
