James Delahunty
5 Aug 2009 11:07
Sony unveiled two new e-readers on Tuesday which will compete with Amazon's popular Kindle e-book readers in the emerging market for digital books, one of which stands $100 less than the Kindle. The Sony Reader Touch Edition sports a 6-inch touchscreen, and has a price tag of $299 just like Amazon's latest Kindle.
The second new e-reader has a smaller 5-inch (not touchscreen) screen. Dubbed the Reader Pocket Edition, the portable e-reader will cost $199. Both new e-readers will be available in August. From the details revealed by Sony, it's a mixed bag when compared to the Amazon readers.
Each device will store around 350 e-books on its 512MB of flash memory, compared to Kindle's 2GB of flash memory. However, both the Sony e-readers have a battery life of two weeks compared to 4 days for Kindle. The e-readers support Sony's BBeB format, the ePub standard, Microsoft Word documents and reportedly, Adobe's PDF.
"Sony is also committed to working with local libraries throughout the country as they make the move to digital books," the company said in a statement. "Sony Readers are compatible with the industry-standard formats that libraries use for their digital collections, so consumers can easily download perennial favorites and new releases from their local libraries and enjoy them for free."
Both e-readers match the Kindle's 800x600 screen resolution. New e-books and New York Times best sellers will be available on the eBook Store from Sony for $9.99 and the eBook Library software 3.0 now supports Mac as well as PCs according to Sony.