The market for e-readers is quickly heating up, as Borders has just added a Kobo e-reader with WiFi to help it go against the Amazon Kindle and, to a certain extent, the Apple iPad and other tablets.
The new Kobo eReader has a 6-inch E-Ink display, an SD slot, a D-pad for navigation and it includes WiFi for downloading books. It will be priced at $140, which puts it on par with the latest version of the Amazon Kindle.
“We introduced the Kobo e-Reader to make e-reading more affordable and accessible for consumers. It worked, making the Kobo e-Reader a bestseller, and the industry followed,” said Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis, in a statement. “The market for e-reading continues to grow at an unparalleled pace, and Kobo is advancing even faster.”
One has to wonder about the appeal of dedicated reading devices when a lot of people are carrying smartphones, or with the glut of tablets about to hit the market. I think there is definitely a market for these single-use devices but it won’t really explode until these are under the $100 mark. We’re slowly getting there though.
Companies like Kobo and Amazon know that the e-reading hardware itself may not be extremely lucrative, so both have its reading software on a variety of platforms. Kobo has apps for Android and BlackBerry and it recently showed off that future versions for BlackBerry will have BBM integration for a more social experience.
Amazon continues to spread its platform around, while still finding the time to take shots at the competition with ads. There are now rumors that the company is working on its own Android tablet and this could very well be the next generation of the Kindle, complete with its own Android app store.
Apple recently jumped into this market with its iBooks platform and e-reading will soon become table stakes for all tablets, if it isn’t already.