TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Blackberry’ Category

By Paul Biba

Fictionwise has launched its Blackberry application. The following is from their front page:

As you may know, Fictionwise has its own eBook format called eReader, which uses a popular Social DRM encryption method. Currently, when you buy a Secure eReader eBook at Fictionwise, you already get an automatic 5% Bonus Rebate! We’re excited to announce that the Beta version of eReader for BlackBerry is now available! To help launch this new version of eReader, we want to encourage everyone to try eReader this week with a special sale (it doesn’t matter if you own a BlackBerry - just try any eBook in eReader format and save).

* Buy any Secure eReader eBook (using a credit card or PayPal) and you’ll automatically receive 30% back as a Micropay Rebate!
* Plus, all unencrypted MultiFormat eBooks are discounted 20% this week! We simply ask that after purchasing a MultiFormat eBook that you try it in eReader format (eReader is one of the thirteen formats we offer when you buy a MultiFormat eBook).

This sale only runs through Sunday, March 29th, so hurry!

By Paul Biba

In a long and thoughtful article, Opportunities in the Digital Arena for Independent Bookstores: An Action Plan for the American Booksellers Association the ABA gives a blueprint for its members to deal with the increasing popularity of e-books. Given the nature of this trade association it makes fascinating reading. Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the link.

Given all of this, we now find ourselves at a critical moment. We can either build on the knowledge base that we have established and use the collective power of our trade association to facilitate the sale of digital content through our member stores, or we can cede this business to other channels. …

While building a solution through our e-commerce product should be our main focus, the association would be well served to consider the issue more broadly. As such, we suggest proceeding along three parallel tracks:

1. First and foremost, we should conduct further study. ABA needs to convene a task force of staff members, booksellers, publishers, and technologists to make sure we understand the issues, the challenges, and the opportunities. We need to carefully study and assess industry trends to find out what consumers want and expect, and to look at what our colleagues at other trade associations are doing to address this issue.
2. We need to continue to engage in a dialogue with key industry partners — Ingram, Symtio, etc. — while also reaching out to potential partners both in and out of the book industry and conducting careful, measured assessments of their products and services.
3. We should step up our education efforts, making digital content and all that surrounds it — social media, e-commerce, etc. — a centerpiece of the education we offer through the balance of 2009 and all of 2010. We also need to write about this issue in Bookselling This Week, on ABA’s "Omnibus" Blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, and through any other forum in which we communicate with our members.

By David Rothman

eReader for the Blackberry Storm is in beta, and jkOnTheRun is impressed. Also ahead will be versions for Android, Linux and E Ink (for the Sony Reader, perhaps?). Excerpt:

"I’m enjoying the heck out of it on the Storm.  That big screen is nice and I like how you have to click the screen to make the pages turn.  One of the problems I have with the iPhone version of eReader is how it changes pages when I accidentally brush the screen.  That’s not a problem on the Storm and the ability to use eReader allows me to use the Storm as my only phone if desired."

Related: Video of eReader running on the Storm, plus earlier TeleRead item from Paul Biba.

By Paul Biba

I don’t use a Blackberry, although I have had several review units for a while over the last year or so. For me, web browsing is important and the Blackberry browser, even on the latest units, is incredibly primitive for such a sophisticated machine. Thus I haven’t followed reading on the phone very closely. (For those who are interested the best browsing experience is undoubtedly the iPhone, followed closely by the Web Kit Safari-based browsers on the Nokia N and E series phones. The new Bolt browser, currently in advanced beta, is another real competitor and is available for most mobile phones. Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile is laughable and not even in the running.)

jkOnTheRun now has a video of the soon to be released eReader for the Blackberry platform. “The lack of an eReader version that worked on my BlackBerry Storm threatened to prevent my adoption of the phone for everyday use. The folks at Fictionwise couldn’t let that happen and provided an early copy of the beta for the BlackBerry. I’ve been using it for a few days on the Storm and wanted to show how it looks and works on the phone. The public beta version for the BlackBerry will be released any day now so keep checking with eReader for word. Of course, we’ll let you know too.”

By Chris Meadows

Did you ever stop to think how many mobile phones are in use in the world? Do you have a guess at the number?

Try "four billion subscriptions." By comparison, the entire population of the world is estimated at 6.6 billion people (or 6.75 if you go by Wikipedia). Of course, some people will have more than one phone subscription, but still, that’s a very impressive number. Of course, this does include all cellphones, from the oldest still in use to the very latest smartphone, but this article on the Communities Dominate Brands blog breaks the figures down further with a lot of statistics.

The statistic probably of most interest to TeleReaders is that fully 10% of those mobile devices are "smartphones." Not all of those are necessarily "smart" enough to be made to read e-books, but even if only 3 out of 4 are, there’s a potential audience of three hundred million. Even if only 1% of compatible smartphone users are interested in reading e-books, that would still be three million people. Perhaps this is why Amazon is making noises about extending Kindle support to them.

The article points out that "[m]obile is the newest and least understood mass media channel," whose content industry was worth 71 billion dollars at the end of 2008—comparable in size to the Internet and global radio broadcasting industry. "DVD sales and rentals worldwide of all movies and TV content is slightly bigger at about 80 Billion which is also the value of the worldwide coffee industry. But mobile achieved this in just ten years[…]" Although I doubt the total revenue involved would make up more than a drop in that 71 billion dollar bucket, surely some of that content must be e-books.

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By Chris Meadows

Analysts asked by Wired believe Palm’s new OS, Nova, and handsets based on it will make their premiere at the Consumer Electronics Show, January in Las Vegas.

As previously reported here on TeleRead, Palm has not been doing so well in the competition for smartphone market share. The Treo Pro, which Palm boosters had hoped would hold onto users until they could bring out Nova, has not sold well (perhaps because it was sold unlocked without any cellphone service provider subsidies, unlike competing smartphones).

Now Palm is in much the same position against Apple that Sony was in the portable-audio-player market fight. Both Palm and Sony more or less created their respective markets (with the Pilot and the Walkman), but both have ended up allowing Apple to steal a march on them with their iPods. Nova could be Palm’s last chance to stay in the smartphone market at all.

It will be nice if Nova allows Palm to make a comeback, but I am not holding my breath. There are so many competing operating systems for smartphones already that it is hard to imagine yet another new one being able to unseat the most popular ones from their thrones.

By Chris Meadows

There were several bits of smartphone news today that didn’t merit a full story by themselves, but are interesting when taken together.

Wal-Mart and the $99 iPhone

The Boy Genius Report and MacRumors are suggesting that when the iPhone hits Wal-Mart, there may be a $99, 4-gigabyte model available. Though Apple has discontinued the 4 gigabyte model for its own sales, a low-tier device that could compete with other $99 devices such as the Palm Centro could fit right in with Wal-Mart’s desire to be the “low-price leader” in everything.

A 4-gig iPhone would make a handy device for people who don’t care about (or have another iPod for) music or movies, but would like access to Safari and other iPhone-specific applications. It could make a great e-book reader, as well. But read the fine print—a two-year phone service commitment is required, and apparently six months on a high-tier plan.

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By Chris Meadows

Every so often when browsing Techmeme, I will come across a pair of stories that, though they may not be next to each other on the page, are nonetheless made to be juxtaposed with each other.

That was the case for this pair of stories. On the one hand, “iPhone soars to 16.6% of smartphone market.” On the other, “Palm revenue craters as Treos fall out of favor.”

According to the first article, Apple is now second only to Nokia in the worldwide smartphone market, and second only to RIM (the makers of the BlackBerry) in the US market. Not only has Apple reached these lofty heights, the article claims, but it has in fact “saved the smartphone industry from a decline this past summer.”

In the US, Apple is now also second only to RIM, earning about 30 percent of the country’s smartphone sales through the iPhone versus the BlackBerry lineup’s 40 percent. Windows Mobile and Palm OS are continuing to decline with Microsoft’s platform holding 17 percent and Palm less than 10 percent.

This leads into the second article, which notes that Palm’s revenue for the quarter that just ended was only about $190 million, instead of the $331 million that Wall Street analysts had predicted. Palm assigns blame for this shortfall to “reduced demand for maturing smartphone and handheld products,” according to their press release—which seems a bit odd given how well Apple and RIM are doing.

The Treo Pro, which Palm boosters had hoped would help Palm’s market share, is not even mentioned in the article; instead it notes that the $99 Palm Centro is probably the only thing keeping Palm afloat right now. Palm’s hopes rest with the new Nova operating system set to arrive in the first half of 2009.

The term “game-changing” has been thrown around entirely too much for comfort in recent months. But nonetheless, the iPhone represents a new paradigm of smartphone, and is clearly gaining in popularity—and with its Treo line, Palm is still clinging to the same one that it has been using ever since it ditched PalmOS.

By Paul Biba

Despite my sarcastic title, this is really good news for the ebook community. The availability of ebooks on more and more platforms can only be good for the medium. Here is part of the announcement from Mobipocket today:

Do you read emails on your Blackberry? Why not read ebooks and enews? Download the free Mobipocket eBook Reader on your Blackberry, and enjoy the reading experience. The online eBookstore is also integrated: find and start reading your favorite stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, straight from your Blackberry! Read on and discover how your Blackberry can become the ultimate ebook reader.

…

Forget your desktop computer: the Mobipocket Reader now gives you Over The Air (OTA) access to the entire eBook catalogue from your Blackberry. At any time, and you can be anywhere, you will find your favorite stories among more than 65.000 premium titles ! Download and try free samples, read other reader’s reviews, buy and download instantly the titles you like… all from your Blackberry.

And of course, all the titles in your library can be downloaded or redownloaded at any time from your account.