Sony finally adds cellular to ebooks

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Sony finally adds cellular to ebooks

By PETER WHITE

Published: 26 August, 2009

READ MORE: Sony Corp | Cellular | eBook

With the arrival yesterday of AT&T Mobility connectivity to a new model of the Sony ebook reader, the electronic book wars are well and truly ignited.

For a long time Amazon's Kindle has been the sole book reading device in the US which can reach out across a cellular network, find a book in its online store, download it and charge for it, from almost anywhere in the US, using Sprint's cellular network.

The two generations of Kindle devices have demonstrated to the world that the cheapest way of buying and storing books, and the fastest way of getting them delivered, is over a cellular network, with the cost of delivery adding just few cents to the cost of each book or newspaper. That proven, it has taken a thousand hints from every kind of technology analyst, a few years, and the arrival of yet more competitors to push Sony, which virtually invented the eBook reader to the point where it has set up a similar cellular deal with AT&T.

Already Barnes & Noble has acquired a digital book retailer Fictionwise to prepare for an onslaught against Amazon, and it then teamed up with US ebook reader manufacturer Plastic Logic. Days later Plastic Logic said it would work with AT&T to deliver books over a cellular network, though no device prices are known at this point (we would suspect that it would need to be substantially cheaper than either the Sony or Kindle product lines, to overcome its lack of brand.

Earlier this year News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch was talking about introducing his own ebook reader to bundle with its newspaper subscriptions, after Amazon pitched a Kindle newspaper deal which was seen by many as ungenerous to newspaper owners. Today he has the option of working with Sony or one of a number of emerging ebook reader independent suppliers and could immediately jump on the bandwagon, rather than wait for its device to be built from the ground up.

The excitement was caused by Sony yesterday as it announced the third member of its new Reader family, which it calls the Reader Daily Edition, which it says caps its new line of reader products, joining the Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition which were announced earlier this month. We'd say that the Daily edition almost obsoletes the two previously announced products, and we can see that the naming of the products points heavily for it being used to deliver newspapers on a daily basis, the same as the Kindle 2, but it will also add ease of use to purchasing eBooks.

The Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition are already available but it won't be until December that we can get our hands on the Reader Daily Edition and even then this will initially only be at SonyStyle stores and SonyStyle.com.

"We firmly believe consumers should have choice in every aspect of their digital reading experience," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division. "Today, we take another large stride to deliver on that promise. We now have the most affordable devices on the market, the greatest access to free and affordable eBooks through The eBook Store from Sony and our affiliated ecosystem, and now round out our Reader offering with a wireless device that lets consumer purchase and download content on the go."

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