WLAN – it’s nice but didn’t missed it yet.
Cheaper – yes, but i already bought the more expensive PRS-650 (so what).

1- The european focus strikes me as something of a Hail Mary play.
On the plus side, they don’t have B&N to contend with for epub customers and the Sony brand still inspires loyalty ’round those parts, unlike NorthAm, where Sony is mostly a punching bag. ) Also, euro buyers aren’t (yet) objecting to the higher price they pay. On the minus side, Kobo is already establishing itself in europe and, for format agnostic buyers, Amazon is there in force with a year’s headstart. Plus the european markets outside the UK are still stuck in hobbyist/enthusiast-dominated mode, which is a double-edged sword; the nascent nature of the market gives then a shot at growing with those markets when mainstreaming finally begins, but there is no guarantee euro-mainstreaming will come soon enough to do Sony any good in matching the supplier clout and economies of scale of the big three ebookstore readers.

2- They’re fighting last year’s war.
A year ago Sony haughtily pronounced they were not interested in a “race to the bottom” and that they intended to compete on “quality”. How’d that work out? Well, their unique 7″ model is history and so is pocketable 5-incher (ceding that market to the PB360) and the “quality-build” metal casing is but a fondly remembered memory. Today they’re doing battle with one 6″ plastic case wifi reader in multiple colors (like Kobo) that matches last year’s Nook price and Android underpinings, if not this year’s. And if their dedicated ebookstore shows little improvement, they do feature a browser that lets you directly download library ebooks and drm-free ebooks from Google and other websites, no PC needed, more or less like Kindles do. All in all, this is progress. They’re still in the fight for number 3 in NorthAm, albeit barely.

3- Being an evil person, I can’t help wondering: if Sony found a way to sell WiFi and IR-touch enabled readers for $149, does this mean that leaner-and-meaner Amazon can sell a (non-deal) K4 for $99? If they choose to. 😉

Expanding their ebookstore into europe surely can’t hurt but I’m not sure it’ll be much help in closing the volume gap between the NorthAm giants and Sony. The switch from last year’s “premium” strategy to this year’s “me-too” T1 suggests they didn’t make up much if any ground on the industry leaders and that Sony global volumes are closer to Hanvon and Pocketbook than even B&N’s single-market scale, much less Amazon’s global scope.

The Sony Reader “line” is starting to look a lot like their Walkman, cellphone, and TV lines; a lot of brand effort and very little sales with even less profit to show for it.

Nonetheless, they’re still in the game.
That counts for something.

I’m not confused at all. As I only have a few Dutch stores and Amazon where I can buy books. But Sony claims that you can buy books from our main Dutch ebookstore as well. So, I think it’s less of a nightmare than you think. (there won’t be a Dutch Sony ebookstore…)

@kaoru: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/chaos-hinders-japanese-e-book-market.html

It seems Japan is not ready for non-keitai ebooks yet.