Explain this to me, please. In the past couple of months, I have heard endlessly of the battle between the iPad and the Kindle, Apple and Amazon, the death of eReaders, the survival of eReaders, the Kobo, the Libre... everything. And yet this surprising piece of news somehow eluded me: Sony Readers have dropped in price. Quite significantly. Sure, there's a sale going on making each Reader $50 cheaper than even the lowered price, but until it ends (tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken), that's a $100 drop from the still quoted numbers of $300 for the Touch Edition and $400 for the Daily Edition. It's possible, of course, that I simply haven't noticed this change, but once again I find it strange that everywhere I turn I see articles about the iPad and Amazon, yet a pretty relevant piece of news like this has been glossed over...It's been this way for months, essentially. Even long before the iPad came out, there was always buzz surrounding "New! Exciting! Kindle-Killer! Apple-Eater!" eReaders. Buzz that almost immediately faded. Recall the initial glow surrounding the release of the Nook. There's still some buzz, yes, but it's subdued, gentle now. And the COOL-ER? Do you hear of that one any more? Same for Sony Readers, almost always ignored because they don't seem to mesh well with views on where eReaders will go (which always leads back to... Apple!).
I've complained about this in the past, and I realize that the free market/press is as it is, but there's something so grossly unfair that every little blip written by any random journalist about the future of eReaders (whether positive or negative) gets blown way out of proportion, but legitimate eReader news - price updates, actual market changes (not just speculation) - just isn't published...
And for the record, I found out about the price drops by visiting the Sony website. I've yet to find any news links to it.
Your post almost, almost, almost got me to finally spring for a Sony Reader. Still not quite ready to make the jump.
ReplyDeleteBut I did find this research today, the first I've seen differentiating buying plans between avid readers and less serious ones: http://www.retrevo.com/content/blog/2010/06/do-e-readers-have-chance-against-ipad
Sony is like the ugly stepsister of ereaders. I own one and love it but it lacks the "glam" of the iPad or Nook or Kindle, for sure.
ReplyDeleteI did read about the price drops on a couple of readers, but maybe that is because of some of the stuff I read, like ZDNet and the NYTimes and WSJ tech column and such.
ReplyDeleteI think it because they are not news that they are dropping the price. It is only normal for people to get excited about the newest and shiniest new toy out there and the others need, if not too successfully, to try and create a buzz.
Great post, we continually hear about the war between the Kindle and the iPad, that we forget that Barnes & Noble came out with an eReader and that Sony's been around for a while.
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