Posts Tagged cool-er

Interead's newest e-readers are introduced at CES

LAS VEGAS—E-readers generated a lot of buzz at the 2010 International CES. And for many travelers, being able to carry around thousands of titles in an electronic reader less than the size of one book has a lot of appeal.

Amazon’s original e-reader is the best-selling item on the company’s website and now Sony and Barnes & Noble have introduced models of their own. But keep an eye on an upstart company, Interead, which is promising to ratchet up the competition with lower prices and a broad selection of titles.

“2010 is going to be the year of e-readers because of the content in our product,” says Phil Wood, marketing director for UK-based Interead.

Interead plans to bring three new models to the market by mid-year—the COOL-ER Compact, smaller than its competitors; COOL-ER Connect, adding Wi-Fi capabilities and a touch screen; and the COOL-ER 3G, adding high-speed connectivity via AT&T mobile phone channels. In addition, new case colors will be offered for the company’s current model, the COOL-ER Classic.

The new models fit well in in the inside pocket of my jacket. In fact, they were specifically designed that way. The COOL-ER Compact measures 6.7″ tall and 4.6″ wide and is less than half an inch thick. The 2 GB of onboard memory can be expanded to 6 GB with an SD memory card, easily holding thousands of titles.

The COOLER-ER Connect is expected to be competitively priced at $249 or less.

“We’re passing along the economy of scale and savings these new models have created,” says Wood.

The e-readers will work around the world and support e-books in every language, with menus in eight languages.

One of Interead’s strengths is its selection of titles—more than two million strong. About half of those titles are free Google e-books.

Also, a new application available from the company’s e-book site gives access to more than 1,400 global newspapers and magazines, along with millions of Twitter feeds. The prices of e-books are usually substantially less than printed volumes.

Sales figures are difficult to come by, since Amazon avoids releasing numbers for its popular Kindle e-readers that were first on the market. But industry estimates are that nine million e-readers were sold last year. Wood estimates industry-wide sales of 15 million units this year. He says Interead’s current model is positioned at number three in U.S. sales and number one in Europe.

Keep in mind that e-reader screens are still black and white. Wood says models with color screens should be available by December. While black and white screens are fine for most books, the color screens will make magazines and other periodicals look much better.

I know there are some purists who still like the smell and feel of physical books, just as some music lovers enjoyed the look and feel of vinyl albums. But e-readers, in the very near future, may well do for the printed word what the iPod did for music.