James Delahunty
8 Sep 2009 0:21
Asus is planning to bring two ebook readers to the market to take Amazon and Sony head on, according to reports. Asus is one of the world's biggest consumer electronics companies, and in the last couple of years it played a large part in the rise of the netbook, a low-cost alternative to a laptop. Now Asus is planning to bring affordable ebook readers to the market to undercut the Kindle.
The Times Online quotes Jerry Shen, CEO, as source. The report says that the company is expecting to offer two different devices, a budget ebook reader and a more feature-rich premium ebook reader. The readers will have a hinged spine with two screens to emulate a book, with touchscreen controls to flick through pages.
While other ebook readers are offered with a monochrome screen, Asus' ebook readers could show full color images of the pages. Some other possible uses for the ebook reader that are mentioned are using Skype with an available mic and speaker, or viewing webpages.
"Our ethos is innovation — as our brand is less well known, we have to run faster than the competition to develop new types of products," Asus is reported as saying. "Any such product — including an ereader — has to have the right combination of functionality and price. No one is going to buy one for £1,000."
Of course, nobody would pay anything close to £1000 for an ebook reader. However, the budget version of the readers, dubbed "Eee Reader", is expected to aim for a price tag of around £100.