Good e-Reader will be attending the Consumer Electronic Store in Las Vegas from Jan 10th to 13th and there will be much glory to be had. One of the emails we received today about new products being released is a new e-Reader from iRiver. They have a new device to be shown during the conference and we get some scoops on what it is all about.
iRiver has been making e-readers for a number of years but is relegated to the sidelines because they have not established a brand identity. Their main claim to fame was the iRiver Story HD which was released earlier this year. This was the first e-reader that tapped into the Google Books ecosystem and allowed users to download millions of free and paid books. The company lucked out and landed a distribution deal with USA giant TARGET and have aggressively reduced the price to a reasonable $99.99
The new product iRiver will be showing at CES is a full touchscreen e-ink device maintaining the superior resolution of 1024×768. It will be using e-ink Pearl and will slim down the device and make it more user friendly. The company needed to move into the touch arena to keep pace with Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Kobo. It will have integrated WIFI and the big rumor is that it will have Google Branding on it and be endorsed by the search engine giant.
Google Books recently opened up in Canada, Australia and the UK this year making the iRiver Story HD a very attractive device. The downside is that it is only available in the USA and the recently opened markets cannot get their hands on it, unless they purchase it from Shopereaders.com. The new iRiver e-Reader will be an international version that will be marketed in all 3 of those countries and maintain the ability to download both free and paid books from Google.
The final name has not been finalized yet and there has been no official submission to the FCC for certification, but we have been told they will be submitting it under their own company name sometime in the next few months.
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.
