Bookeen is a French company and a European pioneer for electronic books. After having contributed towards the design of the first Cybook and its associated services for Cytale as early as 1998, Laurent Picard and Michaël Dahan created Bookeen in 2003. Since then, Bookeen has become an innovative supplier of e-book reading systems. Bookeen has acquired a unique experience in the ebook market with the launch of the five generations of e-reader, has sold hundreds of thousands of e-readers across 70 countries, and millions of e-books have been downloaded. Today, Bookeen spoke with Good e-Reader on the phone and mentioned they have two new devices being announced next week.
The new Odyssey Frontlight will feature a 6-inch touchscreen with a new optimized lighting function, and 4GB of memory instead of 2. It will retail for a paltry 99 euros in order to compete with new entrants into the European market. Battery life should be fairly amazing with nine weeks of reading with daily use.
The second e-reader to be mentioned was the new Cybook Ocean. This is a new 8-inch device with a resolution of 1024×758. It bears a striking resemblance to the Kobo Aura HD, but with a larger screen. It offers an astounding ten weeks of battery life, which should be perfect for the average reader. This edition will come out in the second week of November and retail for 160 Euros.
Both e-Readers will have Bookeen’s software which they have spent a number of years refining in their R&D labs. The one element that stands to be most popular is their inertia scrolling, where users can flick a finger downwards and it will actually keep going until made to stop. This is the type of functionality that people who have tablets normally enjoy. Also, Bookeen has a fairly awesome internet browser to take advantage of the built in WIFI. Finally, both readers will have physical page turn buttons because customers have been responding positively to this type of hardware.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
