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Irex goes with Barnes & Noble
August 24, 2009 | 9:25 am
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By Paul Biba
All Things Digital is reporting the above. This is great news as I don’t think anyone can compete with Amazon unless they have a wireless reader. Plastic Logic’s unit will be wireless, and has announced a connection wit Barnes & Noble, but it won’t be available until next year and Plastic Logic has said that their unit will be targeted at business users. That will compete with the DX, but won’t play into the consumer space. We now have to wait and see what Sony does. I wonder what will happen at the press conference tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Irex sells machines in Europe but hasn’t demoed its newest gadget in the U.S. yet. Its says its newest reader will feature a 8.1-inch touch screen and a 3G wireless connection.
Irex doesn’t spell it out, but suggests that the relationship with the bookseller won’t be exclusive. Canned quote from Kevin Hamilton, North American CEO of IREX Technologies: “We will change the dynamics of the consumer market – users want to easily purchase content from a variety of sources and we allow them to read it on an IREX eReader as well as other devices.”
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Comments:
The alliance with B&N is new information, but tells us almost nothing. IRex could be setting up its own store using FictionWise software – like Plastic Logic. Or it could be using the new B&N ebook store. If the latter, then who pays for ebook downloads via 3G?
Also, B&N might or might not imply eReader support. If so, then there won’t be DRMed MOBI support (and no MobiPocket dictionaries), but there could still be DRMed Adobe side by side with DRMed eReader support. There are a few dictionaries in eReader format, but it is the worst of the popular ebook formats for a “large” screen.
The actual iRex press release (I found it on http://www.bizjournals.com) makes clear that the DR800 will access the B&N ebook store. So it will support eReader DRM.
In an Extremetech article by Michael J. Miller
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2351876,00.asp
Kevin Hamilton says the goal is for this to be a “universal document reader,” supporting the ePub standard, Microsoft reader, Barnes and Noble, PDFs, etc.
Microsoft reader is a surprise, since it isn’t currently supported on any Linux-based device.
Ms Reader is supported by the Hanlin ebook readers. It is treated as a second-class citizen as it is has a range of known bugs and parsing issues that have gone un-addressed for a year or more but it is supported.
If iRex is going to provide decent MS Reader support (Including the dictionaries) I might have to give the thing a look…
Without it I wouldn’t give it a second glance.