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More connected e-book readers on the way
April 1, 2009 | 6:11 pm
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By Paul Biba
This is very exciting news. However, it isn’t so simple to put into place the infrastructure that will allow the reader to locate books to download. This is what Sony is working on, according to the press conference I attended last year. From Yahoo Tech:
Tony Lewis, who heads an initiative within Verizon Wireless to provide access to non-phone devices, said Wednesday that five companies have approached Verizon about wireless connections for e-readers.
“You’re going to see a lot of e-readers out there,” Lewis said. “The interest level is tremendous.”
Lewis wouldn’t say which manufacturers Verizon has been talking to. But he hinted that they are looking at entering parts of the e-book market that the Kindle doesn’t focus on, like college textbooks. …
AT&T Inc., the second largest wireless carrier after Verizon Wireless, has also been talking to e-reader manufacturers, said Ralph de la Vega, the company’s head of consumer services. Since AT&T’s network is more similar to ones used overseas, it could support international e-book readers, he noted. The Kindle can download books only in the U.S.
This last point is a good one and I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere. The Kindle uses the Sprint network and that means that it is CDMA. Pretty much the rest of the world is on GSM, which is not compatible with CDMA, and so the Kindle is unable to work on those networks. I wonder if Amazon is working on a GSM version. Of course that version wouldn’t work on the Sprint network, so it seems that Amazon has painted itself into a bit of a corner in terms of telco technology.
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Comments:
It appears that Amazon is working on a GSM version of the Kindle:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/24/kindle-2-dissected-found-to-contain-space-for-a-sim-card/
Attaching a SIM slot and swapping out the radio are likely to be trivial in the grand scheme of manufacturing the device for sale in multiple countries. There are so many regulations to follow it’s enough to kill a product before it is ever off the ground.
Good news. I’m on verge of buying a Sony, but keep thinking I should see what occurs in the marketplace this year. This just gives me more pause.
I expect someone soon will offer improved design at a better price. Frankly I’m more hopeful about advances in gadgetry than about the books industry coming around on pricing and DRM!
AT n T would be a good candidate for this. They just announced, if it wasn’t an April’s fool internet thing, they’d be offering subsidized netbooks at $50. Such a service could be a great thing for textbooks, and would repay ATT back handsomely, if they can even get a piece of the sales/rental price of the books.
Another wrinkle in this is to think, not books, but newspapers. Hearst is working an an ereader for their newspapers, of course. Once newspapers can put together adequate wireless deals with larger-screen devices that can handle color, and video, and full-page layouts, they will be all set to sell ads and drop the free internet versions (or at least drastically curtail what they offer on those pages).
Maybe the newspapers can be saved after all.