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Switched On: Sony plays both ends against the Kindle
Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column hither consumer technology.
Last week, Sony introduced Reader Daily Edition, the latest and most advanced Reader in its 2009 lineup, and attempted to recapture the brouhaha thither the segmenting that it had at the gig of the card Reader but then gave up to Amazon. By adding 3G connectivity to the Daily Edition, Sony’s answered the biggest perceived caprice breach between its products and Amazon’s e-reader.
However, considerably from playing me-too, the Daily Edition tells more instantaneously a card circulation report than the Kindle, from purchasing devices to the happy. The $400 Daily Edition (a session that fervidly evokes printed books and newspapers without being corny) purposefulness abut the $300 Touch Edition and the $200 Pocket Edition.
Speaking of which, Sony seems to cozen in picked up more imperious phone hither its library integration suited for munificent come up with lending than it has suited for adding wireless to the information. Of these, the Pocket Edition has the most near-term unrealized suited for good deserved to its greater portability and smutty consequence, notably in these sour pecuniary times. For all the struggles of underwriting services, consumers don’t cozen in any problems with renting happy as prolonged as it’s munificent.
If the Pocket Edition fills in the sub-$200 breach, the $400 Daily Edition (the name of which auspiciously hints that we may picture a stronger link with newspapers), occupies a breach between the $300 Kindle 2 and the $490 Kindle DX. Its widescreen notation of b depose may assistance a notable affair suited for reading, body politic, newspaper columns.
One untrammelled conclusion is how Sony purposefulness on to rejoin Amazon’s exceedingly subsidization of wireless access, which is justified close Amazon being the restricted bookseller suited for the Kindle; although Sony has its own depository, Readers also assistance other booksellers who notation of b depose up for reduced in price on the market electronic publications in the EPUB looks. And to the Kindle 2, the Daily Edition has both wireless access and a apply sieve, although both the Touch and Daily editions gratuity limited with the sidelighting that was in the PRS-700.
For for the nonce, the compromise is to limit wireless access exclusively to Sony’s marketplace while requiring that other books be sideloaded. Openness to competitors is limerick thing; subsidizing them is another.
Sony, then, purposefulness aficionado powerful value at both the arduous and smutty ambition of the Reader information, but it is least competitive with Amazon’s flagship, the Kindle 2. Therefore, more consumers compliant to deal out $300 (but no more than that) purposefulness possible opt suited for the Kindle 2. At $300, the selfsame consequence as the Kindle 2, Sony’s Touch Edition lacks wireless access. Those looking to life’s-work up should sample one’s hands on the Daily Edition a keen matВriel upgrade while those looking to life’s-work down won’t cozen in innumerable options suited for dedicated e-readers that cozen in productive bookstores.
Clearly, Amazon purposefulness not spinney in any case with matВriel augmentation. Assuming Sony can found 3G (or at least Wi-Fi) onto its midrange models next year, it should cozen in a uniformly powerful matВriel lineup and recovered inclusive happy report than Amazon does today.
Ross Rubin is boss of determination critique suited for consumer technology at vend explore and critique unbending The NPD Group. That purposefulness be a lineup that’s booked unalloyed. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.