Will the Sony Reader be the Edsel of E-Ink?
In Peggy Sue Got Married, the Kathleen Turner character ridicules her dad for driving an Edsel.
Wikipedia describes the Edsel, unveiled for the 1958 model year, as “one of the most spectacular failures in the history of the United States automobile industry.” What can you say about a car where the automatic transmission controls replaced the horn doodad in the middle of the steering wheel? People kept shifting gears when they wanted to honk.
Monochrome Sony vs. colorful rivals
So will the endlessly touted Sony Reader be the Edsel of E-Ink? Or are rivals such as the iLiad doomed—a conclusion some might make, based on sheer publicity?
I myself see the $350 Sony Reader as a potentially successful niche product that iLiad variants and some dark horses could still rout in the mainstream marketplace if their sellers got their acts together. Oh, and don’t count out Panasonic, which is targeting the Japanese market with the forthcoming Words Gear, whose 5.6-inch color LCD display offers 1024×600 resolution. If the Words Gear goes into high gear in Japan, do you think Panasonic will obligingly keep it out of the States to help the black-and-white Sony Reader? On top of that, the b&w iLiad and Jinke machines are hardly Sony’s only threats in the U.S. I’ll tell about a low-cost, color-capable display technology that in time might wreak havoc on Reader sales, before color E Ink appears and maybe even afterwards as well.
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Faced with a variety of issues—not just a problematic screen but a BBeB-centric approach and a delayed release date and content issues as well—Sony is beating the drums even louder. It’s sticking to the old rule of high-budget, high-stakes PR, the same one beloved by Fortune 500 companies and George W. Bush. Drown out the negatives with the company line.
Sony’s Q&As with bloggers weren’t enough. Now Sony Electronics has “hosted” a bunch of ‘em in its U.S. headquarters in California, and MobileRead today carries wonderfully detailed accounts from the hard-working Bob Russell and NatCh. Without mention of a visit, Engadget has published its own commentary. But will publicity be enough to distract human readers from the Sony Reader’s shortcomings? It did not work for the Edsel, and in the end the Reader may not luck out, either.
Problem number one: The Dear Author backlight factor and other weaknesses of E Ink
The Edsel failed partly because people found it wasn’t as revolutionary as hyped. E Ink devices are still exotic to most consumers, but not to me. I owned a Librie, a more primitive Sony Reader aimed at the Japanese market.
From afar, at least, the Reader seems to be just the Librie II. Oh, yes, it’s been Americanized and there are more options in such areas as memory cards. But if you go by the omnipresent photos, the screen is more or less than same—with a gray rather than true white background. Will you enjoy the Librie, er, the Reader, on a badly lit train or airplane? Or even in your own house? Yes, this is subjective as all get-out. Feel free to disagree.
Once the novelty wore off, however, I myself couldn’t stand Librie—snail-ordered from Japan—except under a strong light. Otherwise the screen contrast sucked. We’re talking about real-life inside, not advertising photos or outdoors. Sony will apparently sell or promote a Sony-blessed reading light, which could help. But if used to compensate for the shortcomings of the display, this approach would be rather Rube Goldbergish. I don’t need optimal light to read from paper. Why should E Ink be different? The technology is awesome but is far, far from being fully developed.
Then there’s the touchy issue of performance in the bedroom. While reading, women don’t like to keep their husbands awake at night. Jane and Jayne at Dear Author worry about Sony Reader’s lack of ability to work in the dark. Of the DA readers participating in a poll, most say they definitely would not buy a machine without backlighting. Perhaps other readers will. But that’s no small obstacle for Sony. Women tend to be smarter than men on ergonomics issues—practical rather than so bedazzled by technology for technology’s sake—and the Sony Reader could be no exception. Thanks, Ja(y)ne!
Yes, those backlight problem will also dog the iLiad, which, like the Sony, uses essentially the same screen technology as the Librie—even if there have been incremental improvements. But as I’ll show here, the iLiad has other things going for it.
Problem Number Two: The Tower of eBabel issue
While the Sony can read unencrypted PDF, it can’t read the DRMed kind favored by large publishers. Instead Sony wants you to use its BBeB format to read best-sellers and other contemporary works whose publishers insist on “protecting” them.
Don’t you hate it when the commercial priorities of tech companies limit the books you can enjoy?
Either Sony, Adobe or both share blame here. None other than Adobe’s Bill McCoy has portrayed BBeB as a format that will give way to an XML-based standard. Meanwhile, if you want to read DRMed books from major authors, you’re stuck with BBeB. Once again I’ll turn to those smart ladies from Dear Author to size up the mess that Sony is giving us. Jane, although most likely continuing to believing in the long-term potential of E Ink, just as I do, has written:
Will iRex be more obliging in the format department? We already know that iRex’s iLiad at least does nonencrypted Adobe, and even if the device won’t do DRMed Adobe, the company may very well include Mobipocket on the iLiad. There has been a huge demand for it in Mobipocket’s support forums, and while Mobipocket isn’t saying yes, it is not saying no either. My strong belief is that iRex will include Mobipocket. That would be significant since Mobipocket is among the more popular formats used by large publishers and public libraries.
But will the control-minded people at Sony get it? Sony is a textbook example of a hardware manufacturer compromised by the conglomerate’s content executives, and this mindset is responsible for the fixation on the inferior BBeB format and the Sony store. Sony’s fiendish control tendencies might even be showing up in the RSS area. As I understand it, the Reader won’t let you plug in the RSS address of any site. You must choose from Sony’s list. Wanna read TeleRead on your Reader? Forget it under this arrangement—well, not unless the Sony people are eager to show I’m wrong in this case. Nothing like the linking of content and hardware, eh? While it’s possible that innocent technical reasons forced Sony to drop the choose-your-own-address capability, this is still a good example of a large corporation’s priorities or lack thereof.
Problem Number Three: The number of DRMed books that the Sony Reader can read
Sony’s BBeB-bookstore, which won’t even work initially with Macs and other nonPCs, will start out with a mere 10,000 or so titles—fewer than I have on an old DVD of classics from Blackmask. This number is pathetic compared to the millions of books in existence. In time Sony will offer many more titles of contemporary, copyrighted works, but guess who’ll already be way ahead in the game. Amazon. It owns Mobipocket and appears to be developing a hardware reader to compete with Sony’s. Live by proprietary formats, die by them. In the end, among people who read DRMed commercial books, not just the early adopters fond of the unencumbered PG variety, Amazon just might crush Sony. DRMed or not, the number of Mobi books will dwarf the number of BBeB books. I lent my Librie to Matt McClintock, owner of manybooks.net, so he could add the Librie format. Last I heard from Matt, things were still bumpy. At any rate, Sony will need to provide for good creation tools for Matt and others; in Matt’s case, he prefers to work with the Linux variety, which even Mobi doesn’t offer.
What happens, meanwhile, if OpenReader catches on? Yes, we’re in touch with major publishers, which are giving us a very close lookover. And at the hardware end, we indeed have had discussions with iRex. While iRex and OSoft, the developers of dotReader, have not reached agreement on business terms, it would hardly be a shocker if the iLiad eventually did the OpenReader format. As with Mobipocket, the grassroots pressure is building up. Unlike Sony, iRex isn’t basing its business model on an e-bookstore with limited inventory and wares in one proprietary format.
If nothing else, keep in mind that the iLiad is just one competitor. Below I’ll mention what could be a threat much worse than the iLiad.
Problem Number Four: A stronger iLiad—and low-cost hardware with better and cheaper e-book displays than the Sony
While Gene Cote’s candid TeleBlog review has raised some excellent issues about the iRex—such as the lack of decent documentation on old-fashioned paper—most of those problems are correctable.
What’s more, although the present iLiad goes for around twice the price of the Sony, it has advantages such as WiFi and a larger screen better for business and professional uses. Moreover, I could well imagine iRex (whose people came from Philips, a leading E Ink partner) creating a smaller, cheaper iLiad. This next-gen machine, if manufactured economically, would be a Reader-killer—or a Reader II-killer. For that matter, iRex and its Chinese hardware partners could license out the new machine to a whole variety of clone makers, including, yes, Jinke.
By contrast, Sony, while willing to some extent to compete on price, does not like to think of itself as a low-cost producer. Notice? It would rather focus on high-end innovative productions. Perhaps this is why it departed from the cut-throat market for PDAs in North American.
Problem Five: Threats much worse than the iLiad
Psst! All you super-alert TeleBlog readers–I hope you haven’t blabbed a not-quite-secret piece of information. E Ink could face a real threat from the low-cost display technology of the kind used in the 2B1 machine from One Laptop Per Child. See here and here.
Imagine—a high-res, reflective monochrome screen that OLPC promises you’ll be able to read both indoors and outside. And there’s a color mode with backlighting.
I don’t know if the OLPC people will wise up and sell their tablet-convertible laptop in the States for less than the $450 now contemplated. But I wouldn’t be surprised. If nothing else, this new technology is too promising to be limited to the 2B1 alone, and I’d be amazed if it didn’t show up on a whole range of machines, including those made or contracted out by Quanta Computer in the Taoyuan, Taiwan—OLPC’s hardware partner.
This isn’t to suggest that Sony will be standing still. I’m sure it will try to lower the price of the Sony Reader and introduce color and other new features in time.
What’s more, let me say that many and perhaps most of the Sony’s boosters in the press are genuinely excited about the Reader. Bob is. He tells me he already has one on order, and I wish him many hours of pleasurable reading.
In fact, I’d rather that the Sony not be an Edsel. That would bad for other e-book readers as well—in fact, other areas of e-bookdom, too, including actual e-book publishing. With PDA sales so disappointing, it would be a shame for other platforms not to take off, and everything is intertwined. So, like Jane, I’ll wish the Sony folks good luck despite their arrogant ways.
But please, let’s contain the excitement over the Sony Reader. I think a MobileRead reader got it right in describing the Sony Reader as an “early adopter’s” machine like the first $500 calculator: “The device seems just good enough to appeal to that segment.” Exactly. While the Sony probably won’t be an Edsel, I don’t see it as an iPod, either.
Update, 3:36 p.m. Washington, D.C., time: From the OLPC site–on the 2B1 machine, as it’s now called: “9. The LEDs that will be used in the display backlight have started lifetime testing in a 8-hour-on, 8-hour-off testing regime. The contrast
ratio on the transmissive mode has been raised from 50:1 to 85:1 with a target of 100:1. The bright-state-reflectance requirement has been raised to 30%, which rivals the best e-paper displays on the market today and approaches the readability of newspaper.”
Related: Gizmodo coverage and Jane’s latest thoughts. She likes the idea of a machine larger than a PDA for reading manga. I agree, and in fact, she might want to try the iLiad (bigger screen than the Sony), just so she fully appreciates the general limitations of E Ink in such areas as screen contrast.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
I think cost is a major issue for most people. Telereaders might pay $300-350 for such a device, but I doubt other kinds of educated people would pay more than $200, no matter how many bells and whistles. Price will drop when there are more entrants to the market. But the wait… It’s going to be next summer at least before prices become reasonable. When I buy a reader (whether it be Sony or something else), I doubt that more than 5% of my reader’s content will be store bought content.
I don’t care about Sony’s online store as long as it remains relatively easy to create user content. It’s hard to convince hardware makers to make a platform for other kinds of software/formats; it’s far easier (from a business standpoint, not a technological standpoint) to construct an end-to-end solution. (Nokia 770 is a notable exception).
I’m a big fan of backlit devices, but an external nightlight for the Sony is a workaround I can live with.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Hi, Robert. Agree with you on the price.
> When I buy a reader (whether it be Sony or something else), I doubt that more than 5% of my reader’s content will be store bought content.
Exactly the situation with most other early adopters! Now, what will the masses do? I think they’ll tire of paying more of e-books than for used copies.
> I’m a big fan of backlit devices, but an external nightlight for the Sony is a workaround I can live with.
Well, as I’m telling Bob, enjoy your gizmo when you get it! At least you’ve taken time to familiarize yourself with the pros and cons.
Thanks,
David
(returning to his typo patrol of the above post)
September 26th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Probably the more interesting question is why did it take a big company like Sony so long to come out with such a device? And why does it involve so much development time? Sony Reader looks to be like a nifty device, but really, new devices are coming out all the time around the world. I’m willing to wait for Sony/iliad to get out the kinks, but the pace of progress in the ebook world has been agonizingly slow when compared with lots of other consumer devices.
In fact, you could say that the progress of software (dotReader, fbreader, even Google book browser) has rapidly outpaced the progress of hardware. Isn’t this a reason for a company like Sony to build open ebook hardware platforms rather than end-to-end solutions?
Finally, I don’t see much effort to make it easy for authors/book designers to make cool-looking books. (In fact, I really haven’t seen their desktop conversion application in action yet). That’s a major factor in a purchase decision for me (although my case may be atypical).
September 26th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Tim Oreilly has some remarks.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Tim O: “In short, we need standardized hardware, standardized software, and standardized document formats.”
Well, not just standardized but good. I’d hate to see us standardize on the wrong hardware, software or doc formats.
Furthermore, within the area of software in particular, we need standardization so that there can be competition not just in readers but in areas such as creation tools. How right you are, Robert, to be concerned about such tools! With good tools, there’ll be a greater variety of content. One can’t divorce the tool issue from the content issue, as we both know.
Thanks,
David
September 26th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Well, I’m afraid I’ll never buy one of these. Two major reasons: no backlight and the DRM problems. I can’t see spending a lot of money on a reader that locks me into only one source of books. I want choice, evern if they are DRMed, from many sources.
Sole-Source-Sony, I’m afraid not.
Paul
September 26th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Being female and reading a lot of books (probably well over 1000 per year) I felt some comment was called for: I am very disappointed that more progress has not been made in the E-book reader field. As for not being able to use Sony’s reader without a strong light source – has anyone at Sony ever read a book? Hello real world? A word to the manufacturers – if it can’t be read (1) in bed, (2) in a bus, (3) in the average living room, then don’t waste any more money developing the product. And if you think I am interested in being locked into a format that only allows me to read what some manufacturer wants me to read – then think again.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
I have been vacillating back and forth today but having watched how the screen refreshes at the YouTube review, I am worried. Ultimately I’ll reserve judgment when I see it at Borders but right now, I am definitely leaning toward no.
September 27th, 2006 at 1:31 am
I think the screen contrast issue is being a bit over-exaggerated. I read the Librie with a normal bedside lamp that I bought to read p-books. Haven’t noticed a difference at all. I do note that my eyes don’t tear up like they do when I try to read books on my Treo. I’ve read the Librie in the evening by dim sunlight, so I’m not sure why (1) in bed (2) in a bus or (3) in the average living room would be a problem. In addition, nobody is locked into a format. I have zero Sony books (there weren’t any English books when I got my Librie). I only have converted text files from the web, and with the Reader it’s actually even easier to put raw content on the device. So no, your sole source of content doesn’t have to be Sony, and you’re only locked in, insofar as you purchase their DRM’ed books. For those who have other sources of content, it’s no big deal. And the limited RSS support is cool too. Hopefully they’ll publish specs on that and we can start our own feeds that could stream chapters to our Readers. I know they put out an RSS standards white paper for the PSP, so it’s a possibility.
Refresh rate looks faster than the Librie. Definitely faster than I can turn pages – I did the first 5 books of the Harry Potter series (gotta keep up with my kids) on the Librie in 5 days (well, evenings, as I have to pay the bills), and the Reader works even better than the Librie.
All in all, the myriad of complaints on this board are perfect examples of different consumer trends that hold back innovative hardware. Early adopters demand perfection, but it’s not profitable for companies to do research into putting out the perfect products that early adopters demand with no intermediate product to make up for the R&D money they’re spending.
And as for the hardware-software unholy union that Sony’s trying to create with the Connect store, we only have Apple’s success to blame for the fact that this model is spreading like wildfire (Zune, anyone?).
September 27th, 2006 at 6:27 am
Just as Sony is “a textbook example of a hardware manufacturer compromised by the conglomerate’s content executives”, Apple is a textbook example of a hardware manufacturer whose executive(s) gets the it wholly right.
Apple has the video ipod in production, which ought to be a very capable reading device. Apple has the market share, the track record of making deals that keep everyone pretty happy, and the software on people’s desktops, with e-commerce built in as well (as of this month, it’s no longer the “Music” Store either – just the ITunes Store). The biggest threat to Sony and IRex will be Apple.
I thought the whole reason Sony was pushing ebooks is due to having seen Apple’s success in selling tunes, which is why they decided to allow open formats. Should Apple enter the fray in 2007, Sony will really have an opportunity to show if they have wisened their act up.
September 27th, 2006 at 10:14 am
Oh, I love that! I wish I had thought of the Edsel when it came to the Nokia 770! With OS 2005, that comparison would have been apt! (I trashed it mercilessly — but *deservedly* — but OS 2006 has improved it immensely. I’m even reading ebooks on it now! I’m posting this from it too!)
Sony as a company is a mess right now. I expect this product to fall by the wayside within a year as Stringer tries to keep the PS3 from sinking the entire company.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:03 am
“Apple has the video ipod in production,”
It does?
“which ought to be a very capable reading device.”
It would?
Are you talking about the current iPods with their unreadably tiny screens, or about mythical future iPods with somewhat larger screens? If the latter, what makes you think there will ever be such a device?
September 27th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Fascinating discussion (I love when things really heat up around here! : )
Fact: I very recently bought a new Ipod Nano (8 gb) although could have purchased a new 30 gb 5G Ipod with vastly more storage and tons more capabilities for a mere $40 more. Why? Because it is and does *exactly* what I want. Form factor is perfect, battery life is fabulous, and plenty of space for enough podcasts, audiobooks, language lessons, and music to literally last for weeks. It is my ultimate audio educator/entertainer and feels customed designed for me . Really, hard to express how delighted I am with it.
1) It took a couple of tech generations to even be conceived. Although I had some general ideas, in fact I didn’t even really know *exactly* what I wanted until I found it.
2) What fits me absolutely perfectly may be totally un-acceptable to others: NO video, NOT enough storage, NO wifi etc.etc.
One size (or color or style) of paper doesn’t fit all – why should one e-reading solution? (was recently horrified to hear my very young niece say she didn’t like to check out library books because “they have boogers in them”, but I digress..)
I’m excited about digital books (and texts) in general because they can utterly revolutionize the reading (and library, and publishing, and education) paradigm. I want to see buried, dusty, crumbling old books (and authors) given new digital life, discovered by an enthusiastic new generation of readers!
So, whatever that takes: Sony Reader, Irex, oled, e-paper on cereal boxes – go for it! There have been and will be many, many “Edsels” along the way to the “perfect” e-reading solution. So what?
I know, because I’ve used and purchased a boatload of ‘em along the way and have no regrets, whatsoever. Onward, comrades into the brave, new reading world and let’s hope the money holds out… !
- Jake
September 27th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
[...] Will the Sony Reader Be The Edsel Of E-Ink? [TeleRead] [...]
September 27th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
[...] Will the Sony Reader Be The Edsel Of E-Ink? [TeleRead] [...]
September 27th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
The negativity of the moderator has almost become unbearable. The tirades against Sony’s DRM are simply overstated. The product will or will not sell based on its own merits. Merits which you can judge when you have actually USED the thing.
September 27th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
I think that the viablity of the Sony Reader will depend on the ability to get books comercially. If the connect store does not have the best sellers as soon as they come out and an extensive set of older books then they will fail. 10k books is not going to do it. Otherwise only people who “scan their own” books will enjoy the reader. I’ll still enjoy mine but there is no way it will achieve real success to anyone other than geeks who can find/create their own content. I’m just glad that the reader will accept txt files and look forward to what the hacker community will do with this linux device.
September 28th, 2006 at 5:47 am
Newrome: I actually have used the Sony Reader in a sense—in the form of its predecessor, the Librie, which I bought. The word is that the color of thenew Sony’s background is a “bit” brighter than the Librie’s. But is that enough? I’m asking Sony for a review unit. As for your complaints against my attacks on Sony’s proprietary DRM, thank you. The TeleBlog is relentlessly pro-user. Proprietary DRM as a preferred business model is relentlessly anti-user. Sorry for the harsh language, but I’m sick and tired of not being able to own e-books for real except for the public domain variety. In terms of the sheer functionality of the Sony Reader, yes, we’re deep, deep, deep in “merit” territory, even if you can stand proprietary formats. Mobipocket and PDF (in both DRMed and nonDRMed forms) will leave Sony behind in the dust in terms of the number of books available.
Greg: If Sony has the guts to send me a review unit, I’ll test the ease of getting something converted from TXT. Perhaps Sony has done that right, and the masses can more easily enjoy public domain books, if they can find them. But keep in mind that most books from major publishers are DRMed, so that if they are not in Sony’s DRMed BBeB format, people are SOL.
Thanks,
David
September 29th, 2006 at 10:30 am
[...] http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5571 [...]
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
“Apple has the video ipod in production,”
It does?
Judging by every rumour site under the sun, it does. After all, Apple already has a half-baked video player with its current 5(.5)G ipod and the move to a full video player would be a no-brainer given all the other activity (ITV and movie downloads), as well as competition from Zune and elsewhere. Public patent information also provides evidence.
“which ought to be a very capable reading device.”
It would?
It would. The display will be as good as any modern full-screen PDA/reader, and the device will likely be more user-friendly and with excellent sync support and e-commerce thanks to ITunes. (btw I’m no mac fanatic http://softwareas.com/seven-things-about-itunes-that-are-just-plain-wrong, but they get things right more than anyone else.) The scroll-wheel in particular will be a nice way to browse.
Are you talking about the current iPods with their unreadably tiny screens, or about mythical future iPods with somewhat larger screens? If the latter, what makes you think there will ever be such a device?
The mythical edition.
October 3rd, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Re vid iPod: Your current msg, refers to an earlier one by you that you’re refuting. Changed your mind? Forgetting about that, no, there is no proof there’s a bigger iPod out there which would be highly e-book capable; but evidence from the patent filings and reports of contacts with publishers would certainly seem to suggest this as as possibility. Furthermore, I doubt that Apple forever wants to leave the e-book market to others. Thanks, and happy reading. – David
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EARLIER POST
Just as Sony is “a textbook example of a hardware manufacturer compromised by the conglomerate’s content executives”, Apple is a textbook example of a hardware manufacturer whose executive(s) gets the it wholly right.
Apple has the video ipod in production, which ought to be a very capable reading device. Apple has the market share, the track record of making deals that keep everyone pretty happy, and the software on people’s desktops, with e-commerce built in as well (as of this month, it’s no longer the “Music” Store either – just the ITunes Store). The biggest threat to Sony and IRex will be Apple.
I thought the whole reason Sony was pushing ebooks is due to having seen Apple’s success in selling tunes, which is why they decided to allow open formats. Should Apple enter the fray in 2007, Sony will really have an opportunity to show if they have wisened their act up.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:45 am
Hi David, I was refuting Branko’s post, not mine. Me, myself, and I are still in full agreement on this one
.
October 10th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
November 27th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Can you increase the font size on the sony reader? I hit the zoom, but stiil would like bigger print.
Do I need to do this in adobe, or through my computer?
Andy
December 11th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
It seems to me that laptops may become the popular ebook readers of the future. They display (in color) PDFs well, and PDFs can be multimedia as well as text. The PDF is a powerful ebook standard.
Of course, many businesspeople who travel already use their laptops as ebook readers. At under $400 (under $150 used on eBay), laptops are near ubiquitous now. If there is a demand to make them smaller and lighter so as to be more book like, the design of laptops will evolve in that direction.