David Carnoy over at CNet sat down with Ian Freed. There’s nothing really new aside from this one question:
CNET: Well, Apple’s saying it’s got 20 percent market share and I’ve heard Barnes & Noble saying it’s got 20 percent as well, so that would leave you guys with…
Freed: Honestly, something doesn’t add up because we’re pretty sure we’re 70 to 80 percent of the market. So, something, somewhere isn’t quite working right. I encourage you to do some more research. Obviously, from the beginning of Amazon we’ve been very metrics-focused and we don’t typically throw out numbers we don’t firmly believe in. Take that 70 to 80 percent number and add up all the others and something somewhere isn’t going to add up.
Footnote: The 20% claimed by Apple was a deliberate obfuscation on the part of Steve Jobs. What they 20% really means is that the 5 big publishers reported that 20% of their income comes from iBooks. Obviously that’s a lot less than 20% of the market.
For sometime now Mike Cane has been saying that Kindle is the de facto industry standard. I have to agree with him. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to look at it.
There was a rather interesting story on the GoodGearGuide blog Saturday:
The nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child wants to join forces to help develop the Indian government’s planned US$35 tablet.
In a congratulatory note to the government, OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the world needs the $35 tablet, and he offered the country full access to OLPC hardware and software technology.
I snickered a little at Negroponte, a man who never accomplished any of his pricing goals, offering the Indian program assistance with something he has failed to do. Heck, the only way he accomplished the $100 tablet was by co-opting a Marvel design.
Admittedly, we don’t know that the Indian tablet will succeed, but I think it has a better chance than OLPC.
So I was sitting last night, pondering the Kindle announcement, when I realized that the ereader price war was over and the company who started the war shot themselves in the foot.
You see, unlike most people I don’t date the beginning of the ereader price war to when B&N announced the Nook Wifi. No, I think Kobo started the war when they announced their ereader back in March. They priced it over $100 less than the other leading ereaders; basically they were selling it at cost. Now that they aren’t selling as many as they expected, they are likely losing money on each sale.
The problem with pricing the ereader that low is that it forced everyone else to respond. I don’t think B&N would have set the Nook Wifi at $149 if the Kobo had cost more. I think B&N would have been happy to price it higher and make more per unit.
Here’s my point: Kobo isn’t an unfortunate victim of the price war; they are their own worst enemy.
I stopped by my local Kmart store Monday night, and much to my surprise they had The Book in stock. I bought one, and I opened the box before before leaving the parking lot. I have to say I’m rather impressed. It’s not perfect, but in the sub $100 price range it’s fairly good.
decent battery life (I’m expecting at least 15+ hours)
can be used one handed
decent build quality
accelerometer
works in sunlight
Low points
poor keyboard
few annotation options
it keeps forgetting the SD card
really bad Wifi reception
In the box
Normally I’d skip this part, but I wanted to point out that there is a user manual with a CD. It has the calibre install files on it on it. I just find that rather amusing, that’s all. You also get the following in the box:
The Book ereader
case
USB cable
power supply
user manual
The Book also comes with 150 ebooks from Project Gutenberg. I would delete them if I were you. You can get much better copies elsewhere for free.
Hardware
It’s a Kindle clone, obviously. I’ve covered the specs before (here), so I’ll just give a brief description. It has a 7″ LCD screen (not a touch screen) and there are 4 buttons to the left and 2 buttons to the right of the screen. Beneath the screen is a keyboard, joystick, and several extra buttons (menu, back, symbol). All the ports and card slots are on the bottom edge and the battery is not user accessible. On the bottom edge we have power jack, USB port (mini-B), headphones, SD card slot, and power button.
My first concern was that the long screen + keyboard would make the ereader feel big and awkward. Nope. It is bigger than the Kindle, but I think it has just the right proportions. It’s difficult to explain the aesthetics, but they work.
The screen wasn’t what I was expecting, though. It is completely usable for reading or browsing, but I don’t think a video buff would be happy. It’s backlit, and you can adjust the setting. I spent some time outside, and I’d say that this screen is definitely usable in full sun.
I like where the page turn buttons are placed. They are at just the right height so this is one handed ereader for either hand. The keyboard OTOH isn’t very usable. You might not want to use it to take extensive notes because all the punctuation is accessed with the alt key (rather like some smartphones). But if you’re used to typing at length on a smartphone, you might not mind. BTW, the punctuation is printed in a really tiny font. I have to hold The Book about 6″ away from my face before I can tell which button I want to push.
The way you select the punctuation is kind of funky. Take the exclamation point, for example. It’s printed above the letter q, but alt+q doesn’t work. Instead you have to do shift+1. I wish they’d stuck with one or the other.
It comes with a basic black pocketbook style case. Even though it has a cheap feel to it I’m still glad to have it. When closed it looks good, and when open it makes it easier to hold The Book. The case is a plus.
Software
It has a browser, music & video players, and a Notepad app as well as the reading app. You can also buy ebooks from the device, and it supports Adobe DE DRM. I’m going to pass on the video and audio players; they’re adequate extras but they aren’t good enough for them to be the main reason you get this ereader.
BTW, while you can buy ebooks from the The Book, I wouldn’t. The ebookstore doesn’t have good prices, so you’re better off buying elsewhere.
Browser
I tried the browser, and the The Book found my Wifi network on first try. Load time for Google was good. Then it choked when I tried to get it to load GMail (that wasn’t fair, I know).
Curiously enough, opening the browser the second time didn’t cause the The Book to reconnect to my home network. I had to turn on the Wifi and connect manually. But it did remember my password.
Unfortunately, I have to say that this is not a usable browser. The Wifi range is shorter than any of my other gadgets. I couldn’t do a demo video because The Book couldn’t see the router 15 feet away in the next room.
It also takes too long to scroll the screen. You have to use the joystick to maneuver the cursor from the top of the screen to the bottom. Each time the screen refreshes the cursor will be back at the top of the screen.
And the browser is also very slow at loading pages. But the upside is you can download ebooks from Feedbooks and the like (if you’re close to the router).
NotePad
This app is very basic. It’s strictly a note taking app and it doesn’t have any formatting options. Even so, I have the feeling that if I used the The Book for any length of time I could adapt my 4 finger typing style to the Notepad app. I think I could get used to it (if not for the punctuation issues).
Library
This had a number of bugs and was short on features. It has folder support, which is good. But that’s all it has. It doesn’t have any sorting, search, or index options. It kept forgetting the SD card. Also, it insisted on using folder icons for all files. I had to guess which icon was the ebook.
Reading Experience
I tried both Epub and PDF. The Book supports Adobe DRM so I assumed that these formats would have the best support. PDF was a major disappointment. There was no reflow option, nor could I auto crop the white space. All I could do was zoom in. I also couldn’t rotate the screen (some of my PDFs are wide, not tall).
There were 5 fonts offered for Epub, which is good because the default is ugly and it added extra spaces before punctuation. Aside from bookmarks, I didn’t see any annotation abilities or a dictionary. Boy is that weird. Why else have a keyboard if not to add notes?
You can set the margins and justification for Epub, and that’s a plus. It also has TTS, but it’s rather mechanical. It’s not as good as the Kindle’s, but I was expecting that.
Conclusion
Augen The Book has solid hardware, a nice case, and it meets my minimum requirements for reading ability. Even though I had problems with the Wifi, this is still a very good ereader if you can get it for $89. I would not get it at the $139 price; for only $10 more you can get the Nook Wifi.
EDIT: This post combines several posts about Sharp and its ereader effort.
Sharp just held a press conference and announced their intent to sell ereaders and open an ebookstore. You can see their 2 models at left; specs for the 5.5″ and 10″ device were not released. They also mentioned that they were in discussions with Verizon to enter the US market (as well as Japan).
Curiously enough, Sharp are planning to use a custom ereader format. It sounds like they picked this over Epub because it has better video and audio support.
Update: PCWorld have more details on Sharp’s ebook format. Sharp already have 29k ebooks in this format from major Japanese publishers, as well as reading apps for Windows PCs, cell phones and Sharp’s own electronic dictionaries & Aquos televisions.
Sharp to demo their XMDF format e-reader at IFA-Berlin
With 5.5-inch and 10.8-inch versions the reader can also play audio and video as well as show words and pictures. The multimedia reader is referred to as an Next Generation XMDF device because it is an advance on the 2001 original XMDF that was sold for Japanese novels and manga comics. Later this year Sharp will launch a digital platform to promote e-book distribution.
Next Generation XMDF is described by Sharp as a "core technology". As well as video, audio pictures and words the next-generation XMDF allows publishers to set the layout of a downloaded magazine automatically. The reader was unveiled in July at a Japanese press conference.
I’m looking forward to the new format, actually. It fills a need that Epub and Kindle formats can’t.
Sharp to End Production of the Galapagos eReaders
Sharp just announced that they were killing the 5.5″ and 10.8″ Galapagos ebook readers. Sharp launched these gadgets last fall in Japan and had also planned to launch them in the US, although there is no sign that any were ever sold,
Sharp will stop accepting orders for the tablets at the end of the month. There’s no mention of why they’re being killed, but they are last year’s model.
The ebookstore that Sharp launched to support the ereaders will stay open and it looks like Sharp plan to follow through on the 7″ Galapagos A01SH model they announced last month, though no release date has been set. It will have a high resolutions screen (1024×600), a pair of cameras (5MP and 2MP), Wifi, and it will be running Android v3.2 Honeycomb a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU. Battery life will be in the region of 7 to 8 hours.
I’ve been waiting for for more detail on this ereader for some time now, and it just popped up yesterday.
When I first heard about the Wink, I thought it would be just an ereader. It turns out that it will be a family of (ereaders with screen raging from 5″ to 9″) by EC Media, a Bangalore based tech company.
Details are still sparse, but I do know that DC Books, EC Mdia’s publishing partner, have already signed HarperCollins and Penguin to supply ebooks for the Wink. Also, the ebooks will be encumbered by Adobe DRM.
There were 5 models listed, and they’re supposed to be available in mid July:
6-inch screen display with WiFi priced at Rs. 11,499 ($246)
6-inch screen display with WiFi, GPRS, Text to Speech (TTS) for Rs. 13,499 ($289)
6-inch screen display with WiFi, 3G, TTS to be made available at Rs. 15,499 ($331)
9-inch screen display with WiFi, 3G, TTS and Touch Screen for Rs.17,499 ($375)
Augen’s The Book (a Kindle clone) very quietly appeared at Kmart this week with a retail of $89. FYI: that price is a lot cheaper than the $129 we’d seen previously. The supply seems to be rather limited, so you might want to hurry. My local store only received 2, and both went fast. Also, the product page has been removed from Kmart’s website.
I don’t have one, and I don’t know when I will be able to get one. I had contacted Augen just over a month ago, and after exchanging a few emails they promised to lend me one to review. Well, that didn’t happen. By the time I found out that they weren’t going to send me one, my local Kmart store didn’t have any left.
P.S. If you get one, I’d like to hear from you. It looks interesting, and I really wanted to see it.
EDIT: This post combines a number of posts about the discount grocery chain Aldi.
Do you want to know how to tell when a market niche has gone mainstream? Well, one sign is that the discount grocery store chain Aldi start carrying it.
According to ereader nieuws, Aldi stores in the Netherlands will soon be selling the ProMedia ereader for 229 euros. If the picture is correct then this ereader was made by Benq, and you can find it elsewhere in Europe for 260 to 330 euros.
This ereader has a touch screen, 2GB Flash, a microSD card slot, web browser, and supports Adobe DRM.
Aldi Launches the Medion LifeTab Android Tablet – $99, 7″ Screen, Dual-Core CPU
Having sold PCs, cameras, laptops, and even the occasional ebook reader, the German-born grocery store chain Aldi is no stranger to selling budget electronics. And today they are selling a tablet.
Would you like a budget tablet with your discount groceries?
I have just learned that the Medion LifeTab E7312, which had previously been launched in Aldi’s UK, Dutch, and German stores, is now available in the US with a retail price of $99. This tablet sports an unnamed dual-core CPU with a pair of cameras, a decent resolution screen, and otherwise eye-catching specs.
Like many other current budget tablets, the Medion LifeTab E7312 runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. It has a 7″ screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600, a dual-core 1.4GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, and Wifi.
It also has a g-sensor, a single speaker on the back, 2 cameras (a VGA webcam and a 2MP rearcam), 8GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. Retail price is $99, and it’s in stores now.
It’s often difficult to prejudge a tablet just based on the specs, but I can tell you that hardly any tablets at the $99 price point have 2 cameras, and more than a few only have 4GB of storage. Just on those 2 points alone the Medion LifeTab E7312 comes out ahead.
But will the performance live up to the specs? I don’t know, but I can say that Aldi has a reputation for providing a good value for the price. I think there’s a good chance they’ll keep that reputation.
Aldi is now carrying a budget ereader in its stores in Belgium. It doesn’t look like much, and frankly we don’t know much about it, but it does offer a new option for readers.
The Billow BK6031L has a 6″ E-ink screen with touchscreen and frontlight. It packs in 4GB internal storage and a microSD card slot, but there’s no mention anywhere online of Wifi, audio, or the actual screen resolution. So of course buyer beware.
Lesen.net is saying that there is no Wifi, and my gut says they’re probably right. If that is true then a reader is going to have to transfer ebooks over USB (both Epub and PDF are supported, including DRMed ebooks).
Some would say that this is beyond the skills of most ereader owners, and that they would be better off with the basic Kindle (which is 20 euros cheaper in Germany), but there have been any number of budget ereaders launched in Europe (especially in Germany) with similar limitations and they did well.
With a retailer that operates in as many countries as Aldi, I regularly read of its first offering of a product. But in the case this ereader from Billow, what we have here is at least the third ereader sold by Aldi. I know of a model with a 7″ LCD screen which was sold in Australia in 2012, and Aldi also sold a 6″ ereader in the Netherlands in 2010.
Aldi Rebrands a Budget Onyx eReader in Belgium – 79 Euros
The European branches of Aldi have been slapping the Aldi brand on other company’s ereaders since 2010. Last year it was an unidentified model from an unknown Chinese company, but this year Aldi is going upscale.
Aldi Belgium is now listing an unnamed 6″ ereader for 79 euros. It’s going to be in stores next week, and comes with a case.
Based on the screen contents, the Aldi ereader shows every sign of being an Onyx model. It has a 6″ screen, frontlight, and touchscreen.The screen resolution is not mentioned, but the listing does say that it has 4GB internal storage and a microSD card slot. There’s also no mention of audio, and given the price I would not expect it.
If you get your hands on one, let me know what you find. I’m curious which Onyx model we’re looking at.
Aldi to Open eBookstore in Germany
Over the past six years the grocery store chain Aldi has released branded ereaders and tablets in the UK, Australia, Germany, and other countries.
Now it is getting into ebooks.
Starting on 20 October, Aldi will be selling ebooks in its home market of Germany through a new service called Aldi life eBooks. The service will offer a paltry million titles which can be read through a matching Android app.
There’s no mention by Aldi of an app for iPhone or iPad, but the announcement does say that you can read on a PC. (SeveralGermansites say there will be an iOS app, but it’s not clear whether that is true or an assumption.)
Aldi will be bundling the new app with an Android tablet which launches next Thursday. The Medion E6912 E-Tab is a 7″ tablet which cost 129 euros and runs Android 6.0 on a quad-core CPU with 1GB RAM. It will be carried by both parts of Aldi (Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud) and will come with a 10 euro credit for Aldi Live eBooks.
Aldi is getting into ebooks rather late, but this venture is less about ebooks for their own sake than a more general move into digital content and services. Also also offers prepaid phone cards under the Aldi Talk brand, and it has a streaming music service: Aldi life Musik.
In a way, Aldi is copying Tesco’s failed attempt to launch a digital content sub, Blinkbox. That effort included ebooks, videos, and music, but it shut down last year after it was sold off for parts and the ebook customers were handed off to Kobo.
It would be easy to assume that Aldi’s venture into digital is as doomed as Tesco’s, but it’s worth remembering that Tesco spent a lot of money buying and building Blinkbox and then shut it down when the company did not provide the expected return. We have no similar evidence that Aldi hs made a similar investment in a money-losing property.
Aldi Opens eBookstore in Austria
Last October the discount retailer Aldi launched an ebookstore and digital music store in Germany. Now it has brought the same service to Austria under Aldi’s Hofer brand.
Hofer Life features a music service supported by Napster and an ebook service supplied by an unnamed company.
The Hofer Life eBooks app has not been released yet, but we do know that the Aldi Life eBooks app was developed the by Lenovo subsidiary Medion.
Localreports say that Hofer Life eBooks offers over a million ebook titles, including 400,000 German language titles. All the major publishers are on board, including comic book publishers DC and Marvel.
Hofer Life eBooks will have Android and iOS apps, and in the hardware department, Hofer is complimenting the ebookstore with a matching Android tablet. Launching tomorrow, the
Launching tomorrow, the Medion E6912 E-Tab is a 99 euro table with a 7″ screen. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow on a 1.3GHz quad-core CPU with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage.
This tablet also has 3Ah battery, a microSD card slot, Wifi, and a SIM card slot for cellular connectivity. It comes bundled with a 10 euro credit for Hofer Life eBooks and a 60-day ps the music streaming app Hofer Life Music.
Digitimes are reporting that China’s ereader market isn’t growing as fast as they previously predicted, and they think it will total around 1m ereader sold in 2010. China Mobile have only ordered around 40k ereaders to be sold under their brand instead of Digitimes' predicted 1m units.
China Mobile Communications originally planned to procure one million e-book readers for subsidized sales in the China market in 2010, but the company actually only purchased 30,000-40,000 units in the first half of 2010, Digitimes Research noted.
Digitimes prediction is rather interesting given that Hanvon have boasted about sales of 100k ereaders each month, with the vast majority of the sales taking place in China. See, this is why I don’t trust analysts.
Mike Cane found a pair of tablets this morning from a company called Velocity Micro. Based on thei rsite, I’d say that this is a custom PC builder, and these are their first tablets. The Cruz Reader and Cruz Tablet are 7″ Android tablets that will retail for $199 and $299 when they are released in August.
Mike suggested (and I agree with him) that the Cruz Reader is running on the same hardware as the white Pandigital Novel. Look through the gallery, and you’ll see that the upper edge of the Reader is identical to that of the white Novel. The dimensions are also very similar.
Velocity Micro have already announced that the Cruz Reader will ship with the Borders/Kobo app. I wish they would include more reading apps (this is an Android tablet after all), but at least it won’t be using Pandigital’s crappy Home Screen & Reader app.
See, I thought the Novel had decent hardware, and once I bypassed the software I discovered I was right. BTW, it looks like the Cruz Reader won’t be locked down, so you will be able to easily install more own apps.
The Cruz tablet, on the other hand, is based on a7″ 800×480 screen, with more RAM, Flash, and a muli-touch screen. It’s also running Android 2.1. Check out the specs.
I heard reports over the weekend that Bed, Bath, and Beyond had the black Novel in stock. Naturally this piqued my curiosity, and I went to my local store Monday morning. Yes they did, and no they didn’t.
My local BBB store did receive a Fedex shipment on Friday, but it wasn’t for the black Novel. They got one white Novel and the display unit.
A couple people over at SlateDroid insist that their store got the black Novel, not white. You might want to get the white one, instead. The one key difference between the black and white models is that the black Novel has 2GB Flash soldered on board and the white Novel has a microSDHC card slot.You can replace the microSDHC card, and I know several people over at SlateDroid who already have swapped the original 1GB card with a 16GB card. I don’t do video, so I’m not going to bother. But I can see the value.
I was hoping that the display model would be the black Novel, but it wasn’t. The display for the Novel was one of Pandigita’s digital picture frames. All it does is play a promo video.
Second Update: These instructions were written back in July 2011, and they stopped being valid by the first of August 2011 (the process got a lot easier and now gives you better results). You can find the new instructions here. Trust me, you’ll want to use the new instructions.
Update: When I originally wrote this, I obviously wasn’t clear in certain details. Several of the articles written about this hack have said that I did all the work. This is not true, nor was I trying to claim credit. Credit goes to a particular SlateDroid member by the name of "meth".
A couple weeks back I said I was going to try to root my Novel. Sorry about the delay. The process wasn’t functional until Thursday night, and it wasn’t until Saturday morning that it was actually worth bothering with.
First, if you want to hack your Novel then you really should visit SlateDroid and check out the Novel forum. That’s where you can find help with troubleshooting. I’m not refusing to help; I just want to do it in a forum setting (it’s easier).
I didn’t go all the way and actually root the Novel. Instead I stopped after I installed a replacement home screen (so I could run other apps). I had trouble finding a home screen that I could download. For the most part they are only in the Marketplace and I don’t have access. Eventually I found Panda Home, and it seems to be working okay.
Installing apps on the Novel requires the use of the command line (that’s what works for me) but the process is relatively easy. You can’t use the new apps from the existing home screen, so you’ll also need to install a new home screen. I have Aldiko, Kindle, Fictionwise eReader and Kobo apps installed. I’d forgotten how much I liked Aldiko.
As you can see in the video, the page turn speed is significantly faster with Aldiko or the Kindle app. General responsiveness has also improved. I’m a lot happier with the Novel now that crappy original software has been bypassed. It turns out that it does have decent hardware specs.
P.S. Here are the instructions on how to hack your Novel. They’ve been checked by a couple people and I feel safe about sharing them. Use at Your Own Risk.
There was a piece this morning on NPR about Stanford University’s move away from a physical collection. This is actually old news (I covered it back in May), but it’s interesting.
The periodical shelves at Stanford University’s Engineering Library are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, most engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete — and books aren’t doing much better.
This is a growing trend for libraries. Most have stopped trying to build their own collection, and instead they join consortiums and share the physical content across multiple schools. Digital content is now more heavily used than physical, so having a copy on hand isn’t nearly as important as it was 20 years ago.
Best Tablet Review has an interesting article on the ereader price war and the current state of the market.They argue that
The first point I want to raise is when the price war started. BTR assumes (like most people) that the Nook Wifi started the price war. I disagree. Kobo started it when they launched their $149 ereader. I still don’t think much of the hardware, but at the time that was a very good price.
BTW, the second battle of the ereader price war wasn’t the Nook Wifi; it was when Sony dropped their prices (before the Nook Wifi). They called it a sale at the time, but that was just to hedge their bets. Also, I think they were responding to the price of the Kobo ereader, not anticipating the B&N price drop. They were trying to find a better price point for their ereaders (whoops).
BTR goes on to predict that only the big three (Amazon, Sony, B&N) will survive and it will be hard for anyone else to enter the market. This is very likely true, but it is only true if you ignore the rest of the world.
The ereader price war has so far been confined to the USA. It has yet to affect the other major markets in Europe, Asia and Australia.When you add them to the pot the prediction is false. And the Big Three soon becomes the Big Four, possibly even the Big Five.
One company that BTR left out was Pocketbook. Pocketbook will survive the US based price war just fine. In fact, they’re in a better position than Sony because they don’t depend on the US market for survival. Pocketbook is based in the Ukraine and Russia, and the USA is actually their least important market. I mentioned last week that they lowered their prices. You might have noticed that I didn’t comment on the fact that their prices are higher than everyone else. I passed because their prices staid slightly more expensive than everyone else. If they’re happy with that price point, then they must know what they’re doing.
Pocketbook was one of the Big Four. I have the feeling that there is actually a Big Five, but I’m not sure yet who that last company is. It’s not Bookeen or Bebook, but it might be Hanvon or Gajah. Hanvon was working towards a $100 ereader before the Nook Wifi, and Gajah is the most widely distributed ereader manufacturer that you’ve never heard of.
So who’s going to survive? My prediction is that all will survive just so long as they can stay financed. Once they have money troubles they’re dead. No one will finance them because of the price war.
Impress R&D (summary translated from Japanese) released a report yesterday on the Japanese ebook market. They found that ebook sales rose 23.7% in 2009 to 57.4 billion yen from 46.4 billion yen. (from $527m to $652m). That also predicted sales for 2014, but I’m giving the predictions the attention they deserve (none).
If you’re looking at the %23.7 and thinking it’s low, you’re looking at the wrong number. Look at the total sales. $652 million is nearly twice what the AAP reported for the US market for 2009. Japan had a bigger ebook market even though they have only 40% the population.
The %23.7 growth could have 2 causes. The Japanese ebook market might be more mature than the US one or the US growth could be attributed to all the media attention generated by the ereader hardware companies. Japan doesn’t have the ereader market that we have in the US; most people read on their cell phone.
Aldi is now carrying a budget ereader in its stores in Belgium. It doesn’t look like much, and frankly we don’t know much about it, but it does offer a new option for readers.
Mike suggested (and I agree with him) that the Cruz Reader is running on the same hardware as the white Pandigital Novel. Look through the gallery, and you’ll see that the upper edge of the Reader is identical to that of the white Novel. The dimensions are also very similar.
The Cruz tablet, on the other hand, is based on a7″ 800×480 screen, with more RAM, Flash, and a muli-touch screen. It’s also running Android 2.1. Check out the specs.
