Comments on: Color, full motion ahead for E Ink—but meanwhile will Kindle DX lower rivals’ prices or kill ‘em off?

By: Dhamu

Dhamu — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:40:34 +0000

::Christine:: Why does book reading hardware need to run videos?? ::

I’ve always wondered the reverse. You can get portable tablet-mode DVD players with seven-inch screens. Why haven’t any of these companies put in a bit of software so the units can read HTML or other files? The battery life might not be great (though it should be better than in video mode, since you can likely load a whole book in memory and not run the drive while reading), but it strikes me that it would add a feature some might use at negligible cost.

My current hopes for readers lie with Pixel Qi screens, with their e-paper-like mode that also allows for optional color, backlight, and video. If you take their “$75 laptop” talk seriously, such readers shouldn’t be expensive.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:45:07 +0000

Excellent points about price, Christine. But I think the tech eventually will reach the point where it’ll be cheap even with the extras.

Thanks,
David

By: Christine

Christine — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:14:06 +0000

I don’t want to pay high prices for color and video. I want to pay low prices for black and white so I can read a book. Don’t we already have inexpensive dvd players? Portable games? Hand held computers? Why does book reading hardware need to run videos??

Reading things like this makes me worry prices will never come down, they’ll stay up and go higher while companies add unnecessary features.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:04:54 +0000

> Me, I’m keeping an eye on Jinke and Murdoch.

Good candidates for watching, Felix. Remember, too, the possibility that Amazon or rivals may do a deal with Mary Lou Jepsen or someone else with different tech from E Inks.

Thanks,
David

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Sat, 09 May 2009 12:57:18 +0000

Ramifications for everybody.
iRex’s large format reader was priced around $900 last time I looked and Jinke has had a Hanlin V9 on their website for 2 years now, waiting on volume delivery of the 9.7″ screens.
It may be that Amazon is subsidizing the hardware (not illegal, you know; Nintendo and the celphone vendors established that, once and for all) or it could be that they are reaping economies-of-scale benefits by contracting for a relatively large volume of screens. Or, it could be that the 9.7″ screens aren’t that much more expensive than the 5 and 6 inchers.
We won’t really know until the competitors come out with their products, but I would tend to go with the third explanation, myself; looking at the price differential between the 6″ and 10″ iRex products it doesn’t seem like the screen is contributing more than $100 or so to the cost, so Amazon’s pricing isn’t all that suspicious.
I would hardly use Brother as a benchmark, myself, since they are clearly pricing their product against Tablet PCs, their real competition in the market they are targetting.

Best guess is the Hanlin V9 series comes to market around $5-600 depending on the features, and $399 for the bare model is not inconceivable now that they’ve priced the 5″ model at $199.

In other words: Amazon’s pricing may bode poorly for the competitors looking to charge high-end pricing on the larger readers but they bode good things for the consumer; downwards price pressure is always a good thing. Me, I’m keeping an eye on Jinke and Murdoch.