Several E-Readers Due By Year's End

The latest on the potential impact on newspapers by electronic, portable reading devices, appears in the May 4 New York Times. Excerpts:

"Portable reading devices with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper are due in the next year from a range of companies, including the News Corporation, the magazine publisher Hearst and Plastic Logic. [Update: On May 6, Amazon introduced a larger version of its Kindle wireless device, the Kindle DX, tailored for displaying newspapers. It will become available this summer, for $489.]

"Even though its [current] six-inch, black-and-white screen is made for reading books, Amazon offers Kindle owners subscriptions to more than 58 newspapers and magazines, including The Times and The Wall Street Journal. (The Journal subscription costs $9.99 a month, The Times is $13.99 a month.)

"Subscribers get updates once a day over a cellular network. Amazon and other participating publishers say they are satisfied with the results.

"For the all the hope publishers are placing in dedicated electronic reading devices, they will be encumbered at the start with some serious shortcomings, [including the lack of color].

"Another hitch is that some makers of reading devices, like Amazon, want to set their own subscription prices for publications and control the relationship with the subscriber — something media companies like Condé Nast object to. Plastic Logic and Hearst have said they will let media companies deal directly with readers and set their own prices.

"Apple seems likely to introduce a multipurpose tablet computer later this year. Such a device, with a screen that is said to be about three or four times as large as the iPhone’s, would have an LCD screen capable of showing rich color and video, and people could use it to browse the Web.

"Even if such a device has limited battery life and strains readers’ eyes, for many buyers it could be a more appealing alternative to devices dedicated to reading books, newspapers and magazines.

"Such a Web-connected tablet would also pose a problem for any print publications that hope to try charging for content that is tailored for mobile devices, since users could just visit their free sites on the Internet. One way to counter this might be to borrow from the cellphone model and offer specialized reading devices free or at a discount to people who commit to, say, a one-year subscription.

For the complete Times article, click here. For dissenting views on the potential of e-readers to save newspapers, see The Opinionator.