According to the Bookseller, Thalia, Germany’s largest bookseller, has launched its own ereader, the Oyo. Thalia has teamed up with Bertelsmann’s Direct Group to distribute in France through Chapitre.com and is also working with Dutch bookseller Selexyz and the Polish chain Empik.
Sales have gone well, with the unit’s pre-orders exceeding expectations, according to Thalia’s Managing Director. The unit has WiFi, a touchscreen and 2GB of memory. A 3G version is planned. The Oyo can access a Thalia-designed bookshop that has several hundred thousand German and English original titles.
As the device uses a sipix-screen and not one of the later eInk displays, the display quality is a bit underwhelming. There are very telling pictures over at mobileread.com or on the german site “lesen.net” showing an oyo and a kindle 3 side by side. Also the firmware is said to be somewhat lagging yet. Nevertheless: It’s the first try of a german firm to get to market with something like the kindle and it’s the least costly model of an ereader with a dedicated reading display (leaving lcd’s aside) ans wireless connectivity over here.
Please change the old-fashioned tag ‘holland’ to ‘the Netherlands’ or simply ‘Netherlands’ .
Thank you .
Oyo is also being sold here in Poland @ ~152€ in pre-orders and then will be sold @ ~166€ when the pre-ordering ends. It’s sad that we can’t get the German price on it 🙁
Of what I am reading in our German forums, people don’t seem to be very happy with the screen quality. Also, with Wifi on, the battery seems to be empty after a couple of hours…