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iRex starts blog, gets € 6M in new financing
September 24, 2007 | 11:26 am
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By David Rothman
iRex Technologies , maker of the iLiad E Ink machine, has gotten € 6 million in new financing. It will use the money to help develop a new generation of machines “on a breakthrough path to the consumer market.”
The financing presumably is not directly related to the new corporate blog, but perhaps in the long-term there’s an indirect relationship. iRex urgently to stay in touch with customers, especially all those e-book newbies it will eventually be wooing.
iRex got into trouble by releasing the iLiad a bit before its time and not providing enough user support. Ideally the blog and an existing forum will help narrow the gap between the company and some of its customers. Without the forum, I suspect, matters would have been worse.
From the financing announcement: “Hans Brons, CEO of iRex Technologies comments: ‘This new funding brings in the opportunity to support our ambitious growth plans. The E-reader market is moving rapidly, with global sales doubling annually. Our product has been recognized as the best on the market and we intend to extend our lead by investing significant resources in developing an even more powerful next generation of E-readers.”
“Rex profits from the rapid development of the e-paper market. The company was mainly focused on dedicated B2B markets as aviation, education and professional business segments and is now on a breakthrough path to the consumer market. Not only with E-books (amongst others under Amazon.com’s Mobipocket format) but also in providing news.
Big question: So when will iRex be able to make a big splash in the U.S. consumer market and use economies of scale to be more competitive with the Sony Reader? Or is is the iLiad forever doomed to be a business machine and platform for upscale readers of certain European newspapers?
Related: Details on the latest iLiad.
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Comments:
Well, i do hope, that the next generation iLiad will do what is most expected. Exceptionelly well working power management and a working document managing software.
The iLiad is a very well working machine as it is and it is the best on the market at te moment, but the evolving e-ink and the growing user base will leave iRex no choice than to develop a machine even better than the one they have now.
My wishes for the next gen device:
- great power management
- fast switching screen
- user replacebale batteries
- much better UI
- color?
There are many more things that can be improved, and the upcoming new display possibilities, like flexibility, fast switching color e-ink and ways to produce larger screens will hopefully bring a few more devices to the market to give us readers the choice.