Plastic Logic’s non-econo price—plus the $199-or-so Astak E Ink model with five-inch screen and ePub
“I can tell you that we plan to be competitive in the eReader category, where prices now range from $199 to $800. But we won’t be at the low end of the market.” – PL spokesperson as quoted in iReader Review.
Details: Earlier we pointed to a report from the Times in the U.K.—a PL partner—saying: “The Plastic Logic will be launched in the US at the beginning of next year at a similar price to the Kindle, which starts at $299.” So—as Alan Wallcraft noted—might the Kindle in question have been the upper-level DX going for $489?
And speaking of hardware: Astak PRO eBook Reader announced, in SlashGear. Via Adobe Digital Editions, Astak machines will be able to read Adobe-DRMed ePub among other formats.
Starting price for the five-inch model—to appear at the end of thes month if Astak is on time, which it often hasn’t been—is to be around $199. Also see MobileRead forum and Astak press release. Sony itself will soon sell a five-inch model at the same price, although the five-inch Astak offers a memory card and some other extras.
August 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I think we need some price reductions to the sub-$200 range before eReaders become must-haves for the reading population. I understand the attraction of addressing the high-end. Plastic Logic has been in development for what seems like forever and has to have a lot of costs to recoup. Still, if B&N is dependent on them for a reader and if they come in at around $500, I fear they won’t be an effective competitor to the Kindle. Perhaps B&N could also cut a OEM deal with Sony for the lower end.
Rob Preece
Publisher
August 8th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Rob, the Sony suggestion is excellent. Let’s hope B&N heeds, while keeping its mind open about other vendors for the low end as well. The real action in e-books is in romance fiction, and within that market, a price of $500 or whatever could be major obstacle. David
August 8th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
David,
I already have a “five inch screen ereader”. You do too. It’s called a Palm TX. It holds all of the Google books I found on that “terrible B&N” free ebook site. I’m amazed at how much original source material I’ve downloaded recently for my genealogical research. Admittedly it doesn’t work too well in the bright summer sun. Why is it that elder statesmen of the ebook set get romantic about our old devices that keep on going and going and going? As far as I’m concerned it’s the best all round ereader I own.
Don
August 9th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Uh, the Palm TX is a nice enough PDA but its screen is 4″ QVGA LCD color, not 5″ 600×800 e-ink 8-grayscale. Battery life is a factor in choosing dedicated readers vs cellphones and pocket computers for ebook readers.
Maybe its the cynic in me but when I hear Plastic Logic saying they’ll be competitive in the $200-$800 range, just not at the low-end, to me that says: “closer to iRex-class $800 than Sony/Kindle $2xx pricing.
Barring a subsidized price from a carrier or newsprint subscription, I doubt they can even hit the $499 mark. I’d love to be wrong but let’s face it; Plastic Logic is coming in with a large-format, feature-laden reader, not an entry-level loss leader like the Sony PRS-300. And they are strictly a hardware vendor at this point. $599 is the lowest I would expect and $799 wouldn’t shock me. Essentially the same price range as the mythical Apple iPAD.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:22 am
The Astak line will be the first E-Ink devices capable of reading books encrypted with EReader DRM. This is expected to be in place by the fall, IIRC. Why doesn’t B and N partner with Astak? The 199 introductory price of the pocket pro combined with the ubiquity of the B and N brick and mortar stores could give them an edge against Amazon. They could even promote the much more friendly social style DRM that EReader uses (If our servers go down, your EBooks won’t!).