Last year, Plastic Logic showed prototypes of its professional eBook reader (EBR) that makes the popular EBRs from Amazon and Sony look primitive by comparison. But late last year the company delayed the introduction of its first product from Q2′09 to Q1′10. In a conversation with Insight Media, a Plastic Logic representative cited market conditions as the reason, and, in answer to a question from this columnist, said specifically that technology and manufacturing were on track and played no part in the delay.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Impressive as the Plastic Logic reader appears to be — with its plastic substrate, polymer TFTs, large screen with E Ink Vizplex front plane, thin form factor, gestural touch interface, ability to make and save electronic ink notations, and support for popular business document formats such as PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel — Amazon has clearly taught the EBR world that very convenient access to a large library of books of periodicals is at least as important as the merits of the hardware. Plastic Logic appears to have learned that lesson well, and delivered the results this week with both barrels.

As part of a sweeping announcement on Monday, book store giant Barnes & Noble launched its eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks), which will allow customers "seamless access" to more than 700,000 titles (to start), as well as over 500,000 public domain books from Google (which can be downloaded for free). B&N’s eReader application supports wired and wireless access to the eBookstore, and is advertised as being "device agnostic" — but there are apparently different flavors for PCs, Macs, Blackberries, and iPhones/iPods. Interestingly, B&N specifically says a version will be available for "the forthcoming new eReader device by Plastic Logic." B&N also mentions "a strategic commerce and content partnership with Plastic Logic, whose eReader device is especially designed for business professionals. Barnes & Noble plans to power the eBookstore for the Plastic Logic Reader."

Sounds good, but will the Plastic Logic Reader be able to access the rich B&N content as readily as the Kindle accesses Amazon’s content? That was the subject of the second barrel of Plastic Logic’s double-barreled PR shotgun.

Yesterday the company announced that AT&T’s 3G network will provide the mobile broadband connection for the Plastic Logic Reader, which is also Wi-Fi enabled. "This alliance is a pillar in our strategy to provide mobile business professionals with a device that delivers a great reading experience, and is fully connected through 3G and Wi-Fi to deliver easy access to digital content," said Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic.

Coincidentally, Credit Suisse published a study on Monday strongly making the case that EBRs are about to break out their niche status. According to Credit Suisse, the installed base of EBRs could explode from 1M sales in 2008 to 3M sales in 2009 and grow to 32M in 2014. That’s a very aggressive estimate and a bit higher than the upper end forecast from our E-Paper Displays, Applications and the E-Book Reader Market Report. But this market has clearly accelerated in 2009 since this report was issued. And, a reliable industry source recently told Insight Media they expects 2009 EBR sales to reach 3M units, so this may not be a bad number after all.

Plastic Logic seems to be making all the right moves. All it needs now is a product. And this time, the product can’t be late.