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Originally Posted by HansTWN
I wasn't offended. But I do find it rather curious that it is so important to Nate that the Kobo guy 'admits' to something.
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Actually, one thing that still confuses me is what the 2 rumours from 2 different sources are that Nate refers to? The blog post does have what can be called 2 rumours namely that the screen was original offered to Kobo and that there were 300k screens in the original production run, but these supposedly came from the same source. (There is the mention of when the Kobo Aura showed up in the FCC but I presume that isn't a rumour.)
There is also discussion of the same rumour in the now disappeared good e-reader blog post, but other then the fact it seems to be the same rumour, there's no indication the source is any different. (And there doesn't seem to be any real rumours on why the post disappeared simply people finding it strange, my take, may be the blog author decided to remove it when they realised it was false.) There have been various speculation about B&N/Nook that you could call rumours although most of it appears to be pure speculation without any real source (so I personally wouldn't call them rumours). And I think it's clear Kobo wouldn't be denying or confirming what their competitors are planning anyway, amongst other things because unless industrial espionage or potentially illegal collusion is involved, they can only make an educated guess. (The comment in the deleted blog post actually said the can't comment on what their competitor are doing.)
The only other thing that concerns Kobo that you could say is a rumour from a second source is that their software 'leaves much to be desired' but that only came up after the Kobo rep commented.
BTW, if Kobo has been working with eInk on this for more than a year, that means they were likely working on it before the Nook with GlowLight even launched. And it seems rather unlikely eInk had 300k screens ready but the product took more then a year to be ready, so that must also mean Kobo were involved in eInk with the screens long before the screens were ready and definitely long before B&N's 'disastrous holiday season'. Note this also concurs with the comment 'ground-up R&D with our partners at eInk to bring this fantastic 6.8" 1440x1080 screen to market' which seems to imply that they were working quite closely with eInk on the development of the screen which goes against the idea it was something developed for B&N who then didn't want it.
If you really want to come up with random speculation about timing of the launch, the more likely scenario is Kobo were hoping to have this ready in time for the September-October launch window but didn't make it. Or if you think direct profits from sale of ereaders is important to them, you could say it was ready, but they wanted to launch the Glo first so people who bought the Glo but wanted an Aura would buy two. Of course the other possibility is they'll lose sales because people who would have bought an Aura aren't going to because they just bought a Glo. Then you could suggest that the Aura is actually less profitable for them so they actually want that. Ultimately you can come up with lots of random slightly plausible speculations but as I said in my first post, the timing issues just seems strange considering there's no indication Kobo's August-October launch window was that important to them. (Even more so since the Aura is being targeted as a special reader, not aimed at their mainstream market.)