AllThingsD » E-Reader Feature

Motorola's Xoom Starts Tablet Wars With iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 02:01:36 +0000

After months of speculation, the tablet wars begin in earnest this week. Motorola is releasing its Xoom tablet on Feb. 24, and I consider it the first truly comparable competitor to Apple’s hit iPad. That is partly because it is the first iPad challenger to run Honeycomb, an elegant new version of Google’s Android operating system designed especially for tablets.

[ See post to watch video ]

Both Motorola’s hardware and Google’s new software are impressive and, after testing it for about a week, I believe the Xoom beats the first-generation iPad in certain respects, though it lags in others. Like the iPad, the Xoom has a roomy 10-inch screen, and it’s about the same thickness and weight as the iPad, albeit narrower and longer. And, like the iPad’s operating system, Honeycomb gives software the ability to make good use of that screen real estate, with apps that are more computer-like than those on a smartphone.

The Xoom has a more potent processor than the current iPad; front and rear cameras versus none for the iPad; better speakers; and higher screen resolution. It also can be upgraded free later this year to support Verizon’s faster 4G cellular data network (though monthly fees may rise.)

Motorola is taking aim at the iPad just as Apple is expected to announce, next week, a second-generation of its tablet. Little is known about this second iPad, but it’s widely expected to take away at least one of the Xoom’s advantages over the original iPad—cameras—and is rumored to be thinner and lighter, since weight was one of the most common complaints about the generally praised first iPad.

The iPad has way more tablet-specific apps—around 60,000 versus a handful—and, in my tests, much better battery life. Plus, whatever the specs say, it’s a fast device with a beautiful screen that delights people daily. But, overall, the Xoom with Honeycomb is a strong alternative to the original iPad, and one that will only improve over time.

The Xoom’s screen is long and narrow, good for widescreen video.

Unfortunately for consumers looking for iPad alternatives, the Xoom has an Achilles’ heel: price. While iPads come in a range of models priced all the way up to $829—none of which requires a cellphone contract—Apple’s entry price for the iPad is just $499. By contrast, the base price of a Xoom without a cellphone contract is $800—60% more. And even with a Verizon two-year contract at $20 to $80 a month—depending on the data limit you choose—the least you can pay for a Xoom is $600, or 20% more before counting the contract costs.

In fairness, the iPad model with the same memory as the Xoom and a 3G cellular modem like the Xoom’s is $729, which is a closer comparison. But it is still less than $800, and consumers still focus on that $499 iPad entry price (for a Wi-Fi-only model.)

As much as I like the Xoom and Honeycomb, I’d advise consumers to wait to see what Apple has up its sleeve next before committing to a higher price for the Motorola product.

Meanwhile, here’s what I found in testing the Xoom.

Hardware

Though it works fine in portrait, or vertical, mode, the Xoom is mainly designed as a landscape, or horizontal, device. The screen is long and narrow, proportioned to best fit widescreen video. The HD screen boasts a resolution of 1280 by 800, versus 1024 by 768 for the iPad.

It felt heavier than the iPad, though the weight of 1.6 pounds is the same as on the cellular version of the Apple product. Overall, it has a solid, high-quality feel. There aren’t any physical buttons except for an on-off switch at the rear and volume controls on an edge. The common Android home, back and other buttons are rendered in the software. The glass on the front is surrounded by a relatively thin black border.

I found it generally comfortable to hold, except when I was reading for long periods in vertical mode, where the long, thin shape and weight made it feel a bit unbalanced.

I performed the same battery test on the Xoom as I have on other tablets. I played video constantly with the connectivity turned on and the screen at almost full brightness until the battery died. Alas, while the Xoom claims up to 10 hours of video playback, I got just 7 hours and 32 minutes. By contrast, on the same test, the iPad, which also claims 10 hours, logged 11.5 hours, or four hours more.

I also tested the Xoom’s front-facing 2-megapixel camera by performing a video chat with a Motorola employee using Google Talk software. The chat broke up or froze several times over Verizon’s network, but we eventually got it to work pretty well on Wi-Fi.

The Xoom’s battery is sealed, and it only comes with 32 gigabytes of memory, versus a range of between 16 and 64 GB for various models of the iPad. However, it has a slot for a memory card that Motorola says will work after a software upgrade to add more memory. There is also a removable back and a SIM card slot that would be used only if you chose to upgrade to 4G in the second quarter of this year.

Software

Perhaps even more impressive than the hardware is the Honeycomb software, which, for now, Google won’t offer on cellphones, only tablets, of which the Xoom is the first.

I’ve always felt that Android had a rough-around-the edges, geeky feel, with too many steps to do things and too much reliance on menus. But Honeycomb eliminates much of that. Actions like composing emails, or changing settings are much more obvious and quicker. The smart but cluttered notification bar has been moved to the lower right and simplified. A tap on it pops up relevant information.

There is still a separate email app for Gmail, as opposed to other email services you may use. But, now, as on the iPad, email is presented in multiple columns and is more attractive and easier to use.

The browser is especially impressive, with PC-like features, such as visible tabs for open pages and the ability to open a private browsing session. Apps like Maps and YouTube have 3-D views. There’s a movie-editing app and live widgets for the home screens that show email previews or video frames.

There are some downsides. The ability to play Flash video—a big Android selling point—won’t work on the Xoom at launch. It will take some weeks to appear. And I found numerous apps in the Android Market that wouldn’t work with the Xoom. I couldn’t locate a working video download or rental service, though Google says these will be available soon.

Some apps for phones, like the popular game Angry Birds, filled the screen beautifully and worked fine.

Bottom line: The Xoom and Honeycomb are a promising pair that should give the iPad its stiffest competition. But price will be an obstacle, and Apple isn’t standing still.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

New Way to Check Out eBooks

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:21:49 +0000

Get out your library cards: Now you can wirelessly download electronic books from your local library using the Apple iPad or an Android tablet.

Last week, OverDrive Inc. released OverDrive Media Console for the iPad, a free app from Apple’s App Store. With the app, you can now borrow eBooks for reading on the go with a tablet.

[ See post to watch video ]

You can already borrow an eBook from a library using an eReader, including the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, but you’ll need a PC and a USB cable for downloading and synching. Amazon’s Kindle doesn’t allow borrowing eBooks from libraries.

For the past week, I borrowed and wirelessly downloaded digital books onto tablets primarily using OverDrive, the largest distributor of eBooks for libraries. I tested the OverDrive Media Console for the iPad. I also used the Dell Streak 7 tablet to test the app on the Android operating system; this app also works on Android smartphones. An iPhone app is available.

Before you go hunting for your library card, there are a few factors to consider. While there are positives to borrowing eBooks from a library, the process has significant limitations that can be frustrating.

The biggest upside, of course: They’re free. In comparison, digital bookstore apps like Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iBooks and the Barnes & Noble Nook app charge around $10 a book. Local libraries pay for licenses to each eBook just like they pay for each physical book. Lending periods vary among libraries, from seven to 21 days, and some libraries let patrons set due dates. Fines or late fees are nonexistent because digital access to the books expires on a set due date, at which point titles lock up and users are prompted to delete the titles.

There’s a major downside to borrowing digital books. If the book you want is checked out, you still have to wait until someone returns it to borrow it. OverDrive’s licenses allow one book copy per person, so several people can’t simultaneously borrow the same eBook. Libraries can buy several licenses for a title so they can have multiple copies of popular books for borrowing. I found seven eBook copies of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” in my Washington, D.C., public library system.

The OverDrive app, running on an iPad, shows how many copies of each book are available and how many people are waiting for each book.

But the OverDrive interface showed me that most of the books I wanted to read were checked out, and in several cases, there were other patrons on a waiting list for the copies. While “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” had seven copies, it also had seven patrons waiting for copies of the book. The idea of waiting for a book with many people lined up to borrow it is enough to inspire even some of the most frugal readers to cough up the dough to buy digital books. Just like with “real” library books, checked-out eBooks shouldn’t impact sales of eBooks.

An OverDrive spokesman says, “Libraries set the number of titles that can be checked out by each cardholder at any one time. That number varies from library to library, and the average is about five titles across our network.”

Book selection is also a challenge. According to fiscal records, my library’s physical book collection numbers well over two million books, while its OverDrive titles total about 11,000 eBooks. And only a portion of those were in the EPUB format, which is the only format that works with the Android, iPhone and the iPad apps. That meant the selection for me is pretty small. Smaller libraries have even fewer eBooks from which to choose. Users can’t borrow digital content from libraries where they don’t have library cards.

Many of my book searches showed the that my library didn’t have a digital copy of the incredibly popular “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, or even anything by the popular mystery novelist, Mary Higgins Clark. I tried entering broader terms into the OverDrive search box and didn’t have much luck then either: The term “London” only returned two results.

According to a spokesman, the D.C. library system has more than 25,000 eBook titles, including the OverDrive offerings, and “will be adding new titles in EPUB format weekly as new titles are released and to meet demand.”

Part of the selection problem, of course, is that many libraries are new to the eBook borrowing experience and are in the midst of building up digital collections.

Since availability is a problem, it would make sense that users could view books by seeing just those books that are available for borrowing. But OverDrive lacks this feature, so users are stuck searching for—or scrolling through—titles over and over again only to find that they’re already checked out by other people. After a dozen searches like this, I was ready to give up.

The OverDrive spokesman said a feature that sorts books to display only those available will be out sometime this year. He noted that several libraries are increasing their eBook catalogs to adjust to increasing demand from tablet users.

But the process for selecting and downloading books is clumsy. After choosing the correct local library, the OverDrive app sends the user out into the tablet’s Web browser to find books in the library’s system. OverDrive’s spokesman said this preserves library branding but that, in the future, this selection process will be in the app.

To download and read the EPUB formatted book, you must sign in with an Adobe ID. This is in addition to entering your library card number. I had one of these IDs from past use of Adobe products, but many people won’t and will groan over this extra registration step.

Actually checking out a book, takes very little time. After all, these files contain only text, not large video or audio files. Since I had trouble finding books to download, I settled on a romance novel featured on OverDrive’s homepage titled “Hawk’s Way: Rebels” by Joan Johnston. It took less than 30 seconds to download to my iPad.

Once downloaded, books looked fine on the iPad and Dell Streak. The screen’s brightness can be adjusted using an on-screen slider and a handy navigation strip at the bottom of each page shows where you are in a book and how many pages remain in the currently opened chapter. Publishers can set the number of font sizes to which text can be adjusted. And with the app, text can’t be displayed like pages in a real book (with two columns of text on two pages opened in front of you) when the tablet is held horizontally.

OverDrive doesn’t enable synchronizing of material across multiple devices, like Amazon’s Kindle app does with Whispersync. So if I download a book on my iPad in the OverDrive app, I can’t open that book on an Android phone or desktop using OverDrive.

OverDrive serves more than 13,000 libraries with a catalog of 400,000 titles from 1,000 publishers, but it’s possible your library may not use this system (check OverDrive.com for participating libraries). The spokesman said the company plans an app for the BlackBerry by June and hopes to enable wireless downloads on other devices in the future.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Waiting for the $80 Kindle? Hang On Till 2013

Peter Kafka — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:00:42 +0000

Since Amazon refuses to say how many Kindles it sells, observers keep making educated guesses: Barclays now thinks the e-commerce giant moved 7.1 million e-readers last year. That’s a bit less than the 8 million estimate that Bloomberg reported in December, but no matter what the number is, it’s a lot of Kindles. Barclays think Amazon will keep selling more, despite (and perhaps because of) competition from Apple, while dropping prices of the devices. By 2013, it predicts the average price of the e-reader will drop to $79.

Kindle or iPad for Reading E-Books?

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:27:56 +0000

I own an iPad and love it for surfing the Web, watching movies, etc. However, I have just started to get into the e-book scene, and have found the iPad to be too heavy for long usage. Would I find the Kindle a better e-reader than the iPad?

The Kindle is much less versatile, but it’s specifically designed for reading books. To that end, it’s lighter, works better in sunlight and has longer battery life than an iPad. Plenty of iPad owners, including me, find it to be a fine e-book reader, and it has color and a touch screen, features the Kindle lacks. I also like that, between chapters, I can use the rich ecosystem of apps on the same device. But you are certainly not alone in finding it a bit heavy for long periods of reading. So, yes, I do suspect you’d prefer the Kindle for reading books. Depending on your budget you could own both, especially since the Kindle now starts at just $139.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns online for free, at the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

Wi-Fi Hotspot Safety and Mac Viruses

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:50:38 +0000

I have had a little disagreement with my IT guy. He says that when taking my laptop out in public, I should never type anything with passwords or confidential information. He says that someone can pick up my information. I say that I can’t believe that everyone in public is totally exposed. There must be some way to protect yourself while on a public network. Who is right?

There’s no single correct answer. It’s true that thieves in public places can and do steal passwords and other sensitive information transferred over public Wi-Fi hotspots. But it’s also true that methods like Virtual Private Networks can mitigate this problem, and that most public hotspots are, just by the odds, unlikely to harbor these thieves at any one time. However, my advice is to avoid doing any sensitive tasks, like banking or stock trading, while using public hotspots. And, if you’re doing anything confidential on your company or home network remotely, use a VPN, which is like a secure tunnel through the internet.

I recently purchased a new iMac and am considering installing anti-virus/spyware/malware programs on it. Reader forums in MacWorld magazine say it’s not needed. A local newspaper computer columnist says he’s had Macs since the early ’80s and has never run an AV program and has had no problems. Other online computer advisers say Macs are always vulnerable and advise to run AV programs. Any recommendations here?

No computer is inherently invulnerable to malicious software, and that includes the Macintosh. However, nearly every malicious program known is meant to run on Windows and simply won’t operate on the Mac operating system. The handful of Mac viruses and other malware that have been discovered are either proofs of concept, or have spread to very few users and done little or no damage. Most Mac users I’ve known don’t run third-party security software and haven’t had malware problems. So I don’t routinely recommend Mac security software.

There are two caveats, however. If you are running Windows on your Mac, you should install Windows security software, to run while Windows is in use. Also, Mac users are just as vulnerable as Windows users are to online scams, or to insecure public networks. So, even though you may never get a virus, you still have to be careful about doing sensitive Internet tasks via public hotspots or careless behavior like clicking on links sent you by unknown email senders.

My car has an audio jack that integrates any input into the sound system. I know that Kindle has a text-to-speech feature. Would I be able to use that feature via the audio jack in the car?

Without having tested your car’s input jack, I assume the answer is yes. The Kindle has a standard headphone jack.

However, note that the text-to-speech feature works only on certain books, not all of them. Publishers have the right to allow or disallow it for any book.

Also, even if it’s enabled, it isn’t the same as an audio book, which is usually read by a trained narrator or by the author. Instead, it’s a computer doing the reading.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Transferring E-Books from One iPad App to Another

Walter S. Mossberg — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:33:03 +0000

Can I transfer an e-book from one of the iPad e-reader apps you recently reviewed to another?

No. Books purchased from the Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple online bookstores are stored separately online and on the iPad, and none of the apps has a transfer mechanism. Plus, the books likely use incompatible copy-protection systems. If you download to your computer an unprotected public-domain book in a format compatible with one of these—or another e-reader app I didn’t review—it may be possible to read that book in more than one of these apps, but I didn’t test that.

My wife and I often like to read if we awaken during the night. Are any of the e-readers back-lit, i.e. usable in the dark?

None of the leading dedicated e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, is backlit. In fact, they use special screens without backlighting to extend the battery life and make reading in sunlight easier. However, there are small accessory lights you can buy for these dedicated readers.

Also, the iPad, which I consider a very good e-reader, is backlit. If you’re willing to read on a small screen, you could use an e-reader app on numerous Android, BlackBerry, or Apple smartphones, or on the 5″ Dell Streak Android tablet. All of these devices are backlit.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and Walt Mossberg’s other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Write to him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Finding the Best Way to Read Books on an iPad

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 01:04:42 +0000

Though it’s just five months old, Apple’s iPad is a certifiable hit, having already sold millions of units and spawning tens of thousands of apps tailored for its 10-inch screen. The tablet has prompted many of its owners to use it instead of their laptops for everything from email and social networking to games and Web surfing.

It’s also a very good e-reader, in my view.

[ See post to watch video ]

Unlike dedicated e-reader devices like Amazon’s Kindle, the iPad offers a wide selection of e-reading apps, and I have used several of them heavily to devour scores of books. In particular, I have spent the past few weeks testing the best known of these iPad e-reader apps, comparing their strengths and weaknesses.

My verdict is that none of the three apps I focused on—which mimic and often interact with dedicated e-readers like the Kindle device—towers over the others. Each has its good and bad points, and I personally switch among them.

First, let me note that this isn’t a comparison of the iPad and the dedicated e-readers. It is about software readers on the iPad itself. Some folks will prefer the focused e-reader hardware, such as Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s (SNE) Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. The latter devices cost much less—the base Kindle is now $139 versus the iPad’s $499 starting price. They also have longer battery life and are much lighter. But others—including me—prefer the iPad’s big, bright, backlit color screen to the smaller, gray screens of the dedicated e-readers, and the fact that they can pause periodically in their reading to do so many other things on the iPad without reaching for a laptop.

For this review, I compared Apple’s own fledgling e-reader software and store, called iBooks; Amazon’s Kindle iPad app; and the newly revamped Barnes & Noble iPad app, called Nook.

Overall, they are more similar than different. Each is free and operates much like the pioneering Kindle device, offering access to an online library of books you already own and an online store to buy more. Each remembers where you left off in your books, and includes built-in search, dictionaries and the ability to enter notes and to highlight text. All also offer the option to search for more information on terms in your books, using Google or Wikipedia.

Apple’s iBooks app visually is the slickest of the three. Its library screen looks like a wooden bookcase, and when you turn a page, it curves like a paper page and even shows the text on the other side bleeding through. When you hold the iPad horizontally, iBooks switches to a two-page view with a rounded rise in the middle, like a paper book’s binding. The iBooks app is the only one of the three to offer a built-in bookstore, while the Amazon (AMZN) and Nook apps require you to jump into the Web browser on the iPad to shop. This is because Apple charges third-party app developers 30% to make in-app purchases, a price Amazon and Barnes & Noble (BKS) prefer not to pay. This may be an unfair advantage for Apple, but it’s convenient for users.

The iBooks app also can handle personal PDF files, synced to the app via iTunes on your computer. Neither of the other two apps offer PDFs on the iPad, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble say they’re working on it. Also, Apple (AAPL) has harnessed the iPad’s accessibility features to allow its e-books to be read aloud, something I couldn’t make happen in the other two apps.

But iBooks has some big downsides. The most important is that, being only five months old, it has a smaller catalog than its rivals—just 130,000 titles, versus around 700,000 for the Kindle app and about one million for the Nook app. For instance, the popular Swedish mystery series by Stieg Larsson is absent from the iBooks catalog. And iBooks doesn’t offer any periodicals.

Amazon’s Kindle app has the biggest catalog of commercial, copyrighted, in-print books—about 655,000 titles. The Nook catalog of a million books is larger overall, but about half consists of out-of-print books. The Kindle app also instantly displays the dictionary definition of any word you highlight. The others require you to press a dictionary icon to look up a word. And, like iBooks, it was fast at opening books.

The Kindle app also lets you see popular highlighted passages selected by other users, and it synchronizes the last page read, your bookmarks and notes with the Kindle hardware reader and Kindle apps on Windows PCs, Macs, and BlackBerry and Android devices. iBooks only syncs these things to the iBooks app on other Apple hand-held devices, the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Kindle app also can be set to turn pages with the same curved effect as iBooks (but without the text-bleeding effect) and it has a two-page view in horizontal mode.

The Kindle app also lacks periodicals, though Amazon says it’s working on this. And the Kindle app, like the Kindle hardware, doesn’t use real page numbers, relying on confusing “location” numbers. The others use page numbers. Also, some books appeared in the Kindle app in scanned, hard to read typefaces, while the same books on the others appeared in more readable type.

The Nook iPad app, like the Nook hardware device, has a big plus: It lets you lend and borrow some titles to and from other Nook users for two weeks. It’s also the only one of the three to offer periodicals, though not all are available. For instance, The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe can’t be downloaded, though the New York Times can.

The Nook also offers more visual effects than the others, including color themes for background and text colors. Also, like the Kindle app, it syncs with Nook apps on numerous other devices, though, curiously, not yet with the Nook hardware device.

But I found more limitations and flaws in the Nook app’s basic book functions. For many words, the app lacked dictionary entries the others had, and books loaded more slowly. Also, one book I downloaded on the Nook app had the first few pages missing and another turned out to be a different book from its title. Also, its horizontal view didn’t work for all the titles I tested.

In my tests, book prices seemed roughly similar on all three apps, though some books may cost less on one or another. For instance, Jonathan Franzen’s new book “Freedom,” is $12.99 on each; David McCullough’s classic “1776″ costs $13.99 on each; and Laurie King’s “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” is $9.99 on all three. Amazon says 574,000 of its 700,000 e-books are $9.99 or less. Barnes & Noble says the “vast majority” of its commercial e-books are $9.99 or less. And Apple says 75% of its paid books are $9.99 or less and 25% of its paid books are less than $4.99.

Overall, each of the three iPad apps makes the device a fine way to read e-books. Multiple apps and stores—including many not covered here—allow choices absent from dedicated reading devices.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

E-Reader Race to Zero Speeds Up: Borders Cuts Prices on Kindle Killers You Probably Haven't Bought

Peter Kafka — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:00:32 +0000

You can see where this is headed: In June, the cheapest Kindle went for $259. One price cut and one product tweak later, Amazon’s (AMZN) entry level e-reader goes for $139.

Time to catch up, Kindle competitors that aren’t Apple (AAPL). Borders (BGP) is starting out by cutting the price of its flagship Kobo reader to $129, down from $149. And the super-low-end Aluratek Libre reader is now going for $99.99, down from $120.

Barnes & Noble’s (BKS) cheapest Nook, for the moment, is stuck at $149, but it’s hard to imagine that price sticking through Christmas.

Meanwhile, anyone have any sales data on any of these things? Amazon boasts that its new Kindles are its “fastest-selling ever.” And it declines, as always, to explain what that means in numerical terms. But I believe that’s as good as–or better than–Barnes & Noble, Borders, et al, which are even quieter about their sales.

Amazon Says New Kindle Is "Fastest-Selling Ever"

Peter Kafka — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:43:45 +0000

So how many Kindles is Amazon selling? Go ahead and make up a number, if you’d like–Amazon never provides any real sales data about the Kindle, and it’s not starting now.

Still, for the record: “More new generation Kindles were ordered in the first four weeks of availability than in the same timeframe following any other Kindle launch.” And Amazon (AMZN) customers are now ordering more Kindles than anything else in the store, says Amazon.

Meanwhile, Kindle readers like “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” too. Amazon reports that “the most popular” Kindle titles “are the books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, ‘Star Island’ by Carl Hiaasen and ‘The Rembrandt Affair’ by Daniel Silva.”

The Wait for Plastic Logic's Que E-Reader Will Last Forever

Peter Kafka — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:54:42 +0000

The Que e-reader, which has missed at least three shipping deadlines, won’t miss any more: Plastic Logic is killing the thing off altogether. Plastic Logic insists that it will still be able to compete with Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle and countless other e-readers, though, via a “second-generation ProReader plastic electronics-based product.” Wisely, it won’t say when that one will show up.

Here’s Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta showing off a prototype of the Que at the D7 conference in 2008.

[ See post to watch video ]

Amazon Says Kindle Sales Will Pass Paperbacks Within a Year

Peter Kafka — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:12:07 +0000

Amazon gives out almost no real data about its Kindle sales, and even less guidance. So mark down this rare prediction from CEO Jeff Bezos, via an interview with USA Today: “I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to 12 months. Sometime after that, we’ll surpass the combination of paperback and hardcover. It stuns me.”

Amazon Selling So Many Kindles You Can't Buy One

Peter Kafka — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:45:28 +0000

UPDATE: I was totally wrong! I’ll think twice before taking the company at its word from now on…
Alternate theory: Amazon (AMZN) has stopped selling the Kindle because it’s about to release a new one jam-packed with astounding features. But my hunch is that Amazon is being upfront when it says on its site that its $189 model is temporarily out of stock. If you absolutely must buy a Kindle today, though, Amazon is happy to sell you one of the super-sized DX models, starting at $359. The new one with a new color goes for $379.

Amazon Says Kindle Selling Faster. Than What? Good Question!

Peter Kafka — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:18:32 +0000

Amazon, which seems to specialize in not disclosing any real numbers about its Kindle business, is at it again. Via press release, the retailer says that the e-reader’s sales are…growing! Specifically: “Kindle device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter–both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis.” One slightly more helpful data point from Jeff Bezos, via the same release: “The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189.” Your move, Barnes & Noble, Nook, et al.

Barnes & Noble Preps a Study Buddy

Voices — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:52:58 +0000

With an eye on expanding its e-book influence beyond its Nook reader, Barnes & Noble today announced the August availability of NOOKstudy, a free software application for PCs and Macs that allows college students to download, annotate and manage digital texts and related material. B&N, which through a subsidiary operates 637 college bookstores in the U.S., says the program “provides students access to all of their materials–eTextbooks, lecture notes, syllabi, slides, images, trade books and other course-related documents–all in one place.”

Amazon's Big, Expensive Kindle DX You Didn't Buy Now Cheaper, Blacker

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:18:19 +0000

A year ago, the Kindle DX seemed like it might be a big deal.

Amazon’s first attempt to expand its e-reader product line was supposed to appeal to a whole new set of markets, like schools and businesses, who might appreciate a bigger screen. Oh! And it was supposed to be a boon to newspapers and magazines, as well–publishers like the Washington Post (WPO) and the New York Times (NYT) were going to subsidize the device as an incentive for digital subscribers.

And then we never heard about it again.

Amazon still sells them, but the DX doesn’t seem to have caught on in academic markets, and the newspaper pilot program hasn’t gone anywhere either. And it has never cracked my thoroughly unscientific “have I ever seen one on the subway, airplane or anywhere else” test.

Still, Amazon (AMZN) wants to remind you that it’s available. It has cut the device’s price from $489 to $379 and says it now boasts a better screen. And a new color case–”graphite”–if that matters to you.

This is where we’re supposed to assess the updated DX’s chances to compete with the iPad, but I don’t think that’s relevant here: The DX was announced in May 2009 and came onto the market later that summer, some six months before Apple (AAPL) even announced its device. If there was a race for a large format e-reader, Amazon had a long head start, yet never got a lead. Hard to see this changing things.

Amazon's Big, Expensive Kindle DX You Didn't Buy Now Cheaper, Blacker

Peter Kafka — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:18:19 +0000

A year ago, the Kindle DX seemed like it might be a big deal.

And then we never heard about it again.

Amazon Announces Kindle for Android

Beth Callaghan — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:38:25 +0000

Today, Amazon announced its free Kindle app for Android. Good news for the bookseller–it will soon boast an in-app bookstore to equal the buying experience on the Kindle. Amazon dropped the price of its 3G Kindle model from $259 to $189 last week due to stiff competition in the e-book war, but Google says it’s activating 100,000 Android phones a day.

Que? That's Spanish for "Where the Hell Is My E-Reader," Right?

John Paczkowski — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:08:46 +0000

Customers who pre-ordered Plastic Logic’s Que ProReader expecting delivery June 24 received something else instead: An order-cancellation notice.

“We’ve been working hard to bring the world’s first product based on plastic electronics technology to market–and have decided that delaying the device a bit longer will result in a better product for you,” Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta said in a message to pre-order customers. “With that in mind, we need to let you know that since your unit will not ship on June 24 as planned, our automated ordering system has automatically cancelled your order.”

Archuleta didn’t specify a new ship date, which was probably wise since the Que has now missed two of them. Nor did he offer any detail on the company’s rationale for further delaying the product.

A spokesperson for Plastic Logic, however, insists the company is simply refining it. “The market for e-readers is changing rapidly, and they want to make sure that the product they deliver is the right one for their target business customers,” she said. “They continue to refine the product, technology and features.”

Let’s hope they continue to refine the price as well. At $650 and $800, the Que seemed a bit pricey for a standalone e-reader, even one targeted at enterprise. Now, with Apple’s (AAPL) iPad redefining user expectations for multipurpose e-readers and Amazon (AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (BKS) dropping prices on the Kindle and Nook to well below $200, Plastic Logic seems to be pricing itself out of a market it hasn’t even managed to enter yet.

Below, Plastic Logic shows off a Que prototype at D7.

[ See post to watch video ]

Amazon Fights Apple…By Improving the iPad

Peter Kafka — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:30:37 +0000

Amazon is fighting a two-front e-reader war. At the low end of the market, the company is battling with Barnes & Nobles’ (BKS) Nook, Borders’ (BGP) Kobo, Sony’s (SNE) Reader line, etc. And at the other end, there’s Apple’s iPad, which costs much more than the Kindle and does much more, too.

Last week, Amazon fought back against its cheaper rivals with a price cut. And many people expect Jeff Bezos to combat the iPad by reinventing the Kindle, adding color and other features.

Here’s a step: Kindle titles that feature audio and video clips–if you read them on the iPad via Amazon’s Kindle app. The feature also works on the iPhone and iPod touch as well, but not the Kindle itself.

In theory, Amazon (AMZN) shouldn’t care whether its customers read e-books on its device or on Apple’s (AAPL) as long as they’re buying them from Amazon. But it may be a little risky for Bezos to highlight the advantages of his rival’s hardware.

Then again, these are pretty modest advantages, for now: Amazon is launching the feature with a mere 13 titles, and five of them are from travel guide writer Rick Steves. But the Steves guides underscore how useful audio can be in some cases: You can read what he has to say about the Louvre, and now you can listen to him, too.

The video is much cruder–a William Styron book has a glorified slide show, but not much else–which makes sense. There are plenty of books designed to be consumed with companion CDs or MP3s, but very few writers or publishers know what to do with moving images.

Maybe that will change now that they have hardware to play with. But my hunch is that it’s going to take some time for the book industry to get a handle on video. And by that time, perhaps the Kindle will be ready, too.

[Image credit: Visual dichotomy]

It's an E-Reader Price War! Amazon Trumps Barnes & Noble With $189 Kindle.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:16:43 +0000

That didn’t take long. This morning, Barnes & Noble (BKS) dropped its low-end Nook e-reader to $149 and its 3G model to $199, giving it an edge (pricewise, at least) over Amazon’s Kindle.

Not any more–Amazon (AMZN) just cut the price of its 3G Kindle model from $259 to $189.

The 27 percent price drop was no surprise–everyone who follows the market assumed the Kindle would drop below $200 soon. There is still a belief that Amazon will add more bells and whistles soon as well to help the device compete with the iPad from Apple (AAPL). But I have a feeling that Jeff Bezos and company will resist the urge to pile on features for features’ sake.

The choice for consumers now is clearer than ever: Get a single-purpose reading device for less than $200 or pay much more for a computer that also has e-reading software.

UPDATE: E-Reader Prices Keep Dropping, Except for Amazon's Kindle

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:18:43 +0000

UPDATE: That didn’t take long.
———————–

The Kindle goes for $259. But I bet if you wait a few weeks, you’ll be able to pick one up for less than $200.

Amazon’s competitors are certainly doing their best to push the Kindle’s price down. Last month, Borders (BGP) introduced the Kobo e-reader at $149; now Barnes & Noble (BKS) is pushing the base price for its Nook to the same level.

That price point doesn’t get you the built-in wireless connection that the Kindle boasts, but if you’re willing to pay $199, you can get that on the Nook, too.

If you want, you can argue that the price wars represent the book chains’ admission that they can’t compete with Amazon any other way. And if you follow that logic, Amazon can keep selling its gadget at a premium of 20 percent or more.

But Amazon (AMZN) is also facing pressure at the high end of the market. For $500, a little less than the price of two Kindles, you can pick up Apple’s (AAPL) entry-level iPad, which does a whole lot more than a basic e-reader. That middle ground is an uncomfortable place to be.

That is why lots of folks believe Amazon will also push the Kindle below $200, while adding new features, soon–“before the end of the summer,” predicts Citigroup (C) analyst Mark Mahaney. So if you’re in the market, it may be worth keeping your credit card sheathed for a month or so.

Like E-Books? Amazon Sells More of Them, for Less, Than Apple. For Now.

Peter Kafka — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 11:00:26 +0000

The introduction of the iPad and the iBooks store has lots of people forecasting doom for Amazon’s Kindle. And Citigroup’s (C) Mark Mahaney, an Amazon bull, acknowledges that Apple will eat into Kindle’s share: He is convinced, quite reasonably, that Amazon needs to overhaul the Kindle very soon and cut its price below $200 to stay competitive.

That said, Mahaney points out that Amazon, with its long-established relationships with publishers, still offers book buyers a wider selection of e-books than Apple does. And it sells its books for less. From his note published Friday:

88 percent of New York Times (NYT) fiction and nonfiction best sellers are available on Amazon’s Kindle vs. 63 percent available for Apple iBooks
The average price of the best-selling ebooks available on both platforms is $11.23 on the Kindle and $12.31 on the iBook platform–a 10 percent difference
All in all, about 50 percent of NYT fiction and nonfiction best sellers are available on both the Kindle and the iBook platform
For eBooks available on both the Kindle and the iBook platforms, 80 percent had the same price, whereas Kindle prices were cheaper for 20 percent of the books by an average of 11 percent

These gaps will narrow over time if Apple (AAPL) pushes hard with publishers to do so. And assuming it does, the real difference for buyers ought to be: Do you want to read e-books on a multipurpose device (the iPad) or one that costs a whole lot less and does much less (the Kindle)? My guess is that even after Apple eats into Kindle’s share, Amazon (AMZN) is going to find plenty of people who just want an e-reader. We’ll see.

"Hulu for Magazines" Gets a CEO: Good Luck, Morgan Guenther!

Peter Kafka — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:46:22 +0000

Remember Next Issue Media, the “Hulu for magazines” joint venture that was supposed to help the big publishers negotiate with the likes of Apple and Amazon in the e-reader market? It has been awfully quiet for a long time, but there has been at least one good reason for that: It hasn’t had a CEO.

Now it does. The JV has appointed Morgan Guenther to the post. Who?

From the press release:

Mr. Guenther served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AirPlay, a wireless entertainment services company. Prior to this position, he was with TiVo Inc., as President from 2001 through 2003 and before that as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Revenue Operations. Mr. Guenther sits on several other technology company boards and is also a former partner at Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP.

John Squires, the Time Warner (TWX) executive who helped spearhead the JV last year, had openly campaigned for the job. But outside of his former colleagues at Time Inc., most magazine executives assumed he wouldn’t get the gig, for whatever reason.

Bob Sauerberg, the Condé Nast distribution exec tasked with speaking on behalf of the JV partners–Condé, Time Inc., News Corp. (NWS), Meredith (MDP), Hearst–explains the group’s choice with…delicacy. Squires brought “huge enthusiasm” to the job as an interim leader, he says. But “as we now head into execution, and working through how to do it, we felt that Morgan…was the right guy.” Etc.

It is worth noting that Guenther will be based in San Francisco, which is on the other side of the continent from his corporate backers, but is presumably next door to all the tech companies the JV will have to deal with. So that’s encouraging.

The discouraging part: The market for this stuff is moving very quickly, and the JV doesn’t seem to have moved at all for the past six months.

Not true! says Sauerberg: Squires, along with consulting firm Oliver Wyman, has been studying the market, and those findings are supposed to be presented at an industry conference tomorrow. Publishing sources also tell me that the JV has done some actual technical work as well, though it’s unclear if we’ll ever see it.

Okay. Here’s the bigger issue: Even in the best-case scenario, this kind of media joint venture works only if the partners behind it try really, really hard to make it work. Hulu itself is a great product, but that JV is now struggling to balance the competing interests of its network TV owners.

And in this case, it’s unclear whether Next Issue Media’s owners really believe they need a single aggregator to market and distribute their stuff, a la iTunes in music and Hulu and YouTube for video.

Most telling point: Next Issue Media doesn’t have exclusive rights to distribute its partners’ stuff, as Hulu does. That is: Any publisher is free to set up its own deals with Apple (AAPL) or Amazon (AMZN) or anyone else.

So you can very easily imagine a scenario where Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos applies leverage to cut a separate deal with Time or Condé, etc. And once that starts happening…well, you can see how this one could play out.

Perhaps Squires was lucky not to get the gig.

News Corp. Buys Hearst's Skiff Platform, Leaves the Reader

Peter Kafka — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:31:22 +0000

In January, Hearst and Sprint showed off something called a Skiff e-reader, which was designed with newspapers and magazines in mind and was supposed to go on sale this year.

Hope you weren’t planning on buying one.

News Corp. announced today that it has purchased Skiff from Hearst–but only the publisher’s e-reader software platform. The device itself remains the property of Hearst, which doesn’t want it, either; I’m told the publisher is trying to find a buyer.

It’s theoretically possible that Sprint (S) will continue forward with a reading device that didn’t seem very appealing in January and that no one seems to want now. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Official word from Sprint PR: “We have no comment at this time.”

So what to make of News Corp.’s purchase?

First: Not a surprise. News Corp. (which owns this Web site) and Hearst have been talking about a deal since last year. As I wrote in January, when I took a look at the Skiff reader and talked to Skiff President Gil Fuchsberg:

…the driving idea behind the company is to create a platform for producing, distributing and selling magazines and newspapers on a variety of devices.

In theory, at least, the publications Hearst distributes and sells should work on any gadget, whether it’s a smartphone like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, one of the many tablets coming on the market, or even a rival e-reader like Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle. And Hearst doesn’t want to sell just its magazines and newspapers, but those of any publisher.

Does this sound familiar? It should because this is also the supposed goal of the “Hulu for magazines” consortium that Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. created last year. And Hearst is a member of that joint venture.

So either Hearst’s company is going to compete with the platform the JV is supposed to create or Skiff will become part of the JV. Ask the various publishers in the group what they think will become of Skiff and you’ll get confusing responses, all of which sound like a muttered version of “I don’t know.”

That said, it seems likely that someone–perhaps the consortium, or perhaps a consortium member like News Corp. (NWS), which also owns this Web site–will end up buying at least a piece of Skiff.

At a minimum, Hearst officials are fairly candid about being interested in finding someone else to invest in the company; I’ve been told the publisher has plowed some $35 million into it to date.

Meanwhile, since the “Hulu for Magazines” joint venture (now officially named “Next Issue Media”) didn’t end up using the Skiff platform, what does News Corp. intend to do with it?

Easy enough to assume that News Corp. will incorporate it into its planned digital news subscription service. But that service is still nascent at best: As of last month, it had zero partners signed up.

It’s also worth noting that News Corp. now has several different ways to play digital media e-commerce: In addition to Skiff, it has a stake in whatever Next Issue Media builds, as well as the digital commerce platform that News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal has built (it’s possible these latter two will be combined).

And News Corp. has purchased yet another option, by buying a stake in Journalism Online, the Gordon Crovitz/Steve Brill online subscription platform.

That’s a whole lot of choices for a market that doesn’t really exist yet, and I assume those will consolidate over time. Keep watching…

In the meantime, check out this January interview with Skiff’s Fuchsberg, who will be joining News Corp. as part of the acquisition.

[ See post to watch video ]

Irex, a Kindle-Killer That Wasn't, Reaches the End of Its Story

Peter Kafka — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:44:37 +0000

Confused by the ever-increasing number of Kindle competitors? You may be able to scratch one off the list: E-reader maker Irex has reportedly filed for bankruptcy.

The Dutch company had been producing readers aimed at European business users before entering the U.S. market this spring via distribution deals at Barnes & Noble (BKS) and Best Buy (BBY). But you’d be very hard-pressed to find anyone who bought the $400 DR800SG (read Walt Mossberg’s review of the device).

There is still a flood of e-readers on the way, though: Borders (BGP), for instance, promises to sell at least 10 different brands by the end of the year. But none of them will be produced by Amazon (AMZN) or Apple (AAPL), and it’s going to be hard to persuade customers to buy anything that doesn’t come from one of those two companies.