Today, August 25th, Sony held a press conference at the New York City public library in the heart of Manhattan right on Fifth Avenue near Grand Central train station. It is the heart of New York’s reading community. The choice of venue was not coincidental, as Sony announced a new e-book reader product and a major tie-up with libraries to deliver free content.

Norbert Hildebrand
Insight Media Analyst

During the last few weeks rumors circulated about what Sony would release. Would they come up with something new altogether or something more pedestrian? As it turns out, Sony did deliver something new and exciting.

The warm-up act was a series of demonstration tables equipped with refreshed 5" and 6" Sony e-book readers, where attendees were invited to take them for a test drive. The device with the 5" screen, dubbed the Pocket Edition, stresses high portability and carries a price of $199. The $299 device with the 6" screen, named the Touch Edition, adds a new touch screen and allows note taking via a touch QWERTY keyboard, as well as "finger" scribbled notes on the display. Both types of notes can be printed once the device is connected to a computer with printer. For both devices, more memory is now standard (512MB) and content can be downloaded via the computer’s Internet connection.

Playing with both devices did not reveal any earth shattering new developments. The screen is based on the old faithful (it seems strange to use this expression for a technology so new to the marketplace) black and white E Ink display offering 16 levels of gray. The refresh rate seems acceptable (no numbers were given), but the reaction of the touch screen seemed to be on the slow side and may require some getting used to for consumers.

The surprise was the announcement of a new 7" device called Daily Edition. With a 3G connection, this device will also offer a touch screen and will work in landscape as well as portrait orientation. The software will allow access from PCs as well as from Mac Computers and will be available for the coming holiday season for $399.

This brand new device (there were none available to play with) is competing with the Amazon Kindle DX and is positioned to allow a more convenient viewing of newspapers and magazines. While the business model for accessing newspapers was not announced today, we imagine that Sony is working diligently on signing up those suffering newspapers while they are still around.

The screen size is obviously a balance between transportability and viewing area (not to mention display cost). Sony believes that the 7" size strikes the best compromise in this sense and allows viewing of a multi column layout in landscape mode. Ultimately, the consumer will decide where the best compromise lies. We believe that several screen sizes will co-exist for the near future, but ultimately a larger screen will prevail for newspaper and magazine applications.

The 3G wireless connection is provided by ATT, but allows only access to the Sony book-store. There will be no monthly or transaction fees according to the press release. No direct access to the Internet will be available when the device is coming to market. Similarly, Sony didn’t answer any questions about opening up the platform for other applications, such as third party developed apps that are taking the smartphone space by storm.

But Sony didn’t stop there. As the location suggested, there was much discussion about content availability. During the last few weeks, Sony had already released bits and pieces of their strategy to gain more market share in this highly attractive consumer electronic market segment. First of all, Sony will be moving their content to the e-pub format as endorsed by the publishing organizations. This will allow consumer access to public libraries that offer e-books to everyone who has a library card! This is indeed a new concept for e-book readers — basically free content. Together with the access to over 1 million free Google books (Google offers only historic books like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Treasure Island), Sony claims a very large access to free content. Under the current guidelines the library access would require a computer cable connection, as even the Daily Edition’s wireless connection cannot connect over the Internet to the library.

From this perspective, the business plan, as laid out by Sony, provides hope for a more open platform for e-readers and challenges Kindle to respond. Is Sony taking the lead in this booming market? No. They announced good solid products and an interesting business plan for the content side, which includes the public libraries (we envisioned this as one potential driver for EBR sales in our 2009 EBR report published in early 2009).

What more can we wish for from Sony? As a true market leader we would like to see market, product and business leadership, something that is more the province of Amazon at this moment. How can Sony get there? How about a larger screen, third party apps and Internet access via the 3G connection? In addition, how about adding WiFi to the device? At the end they would have a device that one could actually use for solving the newspaper crossword puzzle, and with the embedded dictionary, I might finally finish those NY Times puzzles.