Archive for the ‘kindle vs sony ereaders’ tag
More Thoughts on the New Sony eReaders 1 comment
The more I ponder Sony’s newly announced ereaders the more bizarre I think it is that Sony chose not to include a wireless connection in the PRS-350 and PRS-650. The only way I can explain this omission to myself is that Sony persists in looking at the ereader market primarily from the point of view of a hardware manufacturer with little regard for the market from the perspective of a content provider.
The new Sony Touch Edition is priced higher than the primary competition, no doubt in large part to the shiny new touchscreen that Sony has implemented. This in itself may not be such a problem, as in addition to a lot of hardcore Sony fans out there, many users will also value a touchscreen and the freehand note taking feature.
How much would it have cost Sony to include a Wi-Fi connection? $10 more per unit? $20? I’m not sure, but I think it should have been included at the announced price. A wireless connection is now perceived as being a standard ereader feature, and the Sony Touch and Pocket Editions will be seen as being somewhat crippled without it.
With a wireless connection Sony would be able to sell more of its ereaders, and more ereaders in the hands of users would mean more sales from the Sony Reader Store. Also, a wireless connection makes it almost too easy to buy ebooks. If you don’t develop some self control it is very easy to end up with a large backlog of purchased books waiting for your time to get them read. With a Wi-Fi connection in its ereaders Sony would surely sell more content from its Reader Store.
It feels to me (admittedly without actually yet having seen and worked with the new ereaders) as though Sony has taken a couple of steps forward and another step back, and quite possibly tripped over its own feet in the process.
Its sad really. Yes, I am a Kindle fan. That would be because I feel that the Kindle is the best ereader out there for the money at the present time. One reason is that it just works. Kindlers are not waiting around for the next patch to fix broken features or to finally add promised but still missing capabilities. Yes, there is still the occasional problem, and there will always be more features that we want, but Amazon has had the time to get most of the bugs worked out. The Kindle is the most mature platform. The Kindle Store also has more content, and to my thinking the Amazon shopping experience is better than the competition.
That being said, one of the reasons that the Kindle is more advanced is the competition presented by the NOOK, Kobo and all of the other announced ereaders that were waiting to jump into the market. Competition is generally good for consumers, and the ereader market is no different. I would like to see Sony introduce a really good ereader, Barnes & Noble to keep improving the NOOK, Kobo to introduce a better ereader with more advanced features, etc.
The new Sony ereaders do look like a a big improvement and I imagine that they will do quite well internationally, but I think that the absence of wireless connectivity will impair their chance to be a real contender in the US market.
If you want to have a look at the manuals for the PRS-350 and PRS-650 I have posted the links to them on the ereader manuals page.
Below are a couple of videos of the new Sony ereaders from YouTube. The first is a promotional video from SonyLearnTV, while the second is from SSRoss99 who was at the unveiling of the ereaders at NYC today. The other ereader in the second video is the jetBook Mini. The new touchscreen is obviously much better than that on the older models.
