Sony reveals prototype 13.3-inch e-ink slate with stylus

[Dulin's Books]

ITs no more difficult to make one size than the other. yield is the same between sizes. Kindle just started selling the DX again for $299 probably in response to this to get some mind share before it launches. so it will be higher than $299 but Sony isnt crazy even though they are normally on the high end. figure $499 or less when it gets a retail price.

the display could cost them as much as $150 but the rest of the components are no more expensive than the smaller readers except for the battery which will have to be biggger. It will have the same problems now as the larger readers have faced since they first launched. iPad will be seen as more versatile and therefor will have to set teh price ceiling even though this is a larger display. With Surface RT and an iPad model both sitting at $499 its conceivable that Sony would even try to push this under that to $399

[BoldlyDubious]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

[...] its conceivable that Sony would even try to push this under that to $399

You seem to assume that Sony will go for the consumer market. I expect instead that this type of device will be (at least initially) proposed by Sony mainly to companies and universities. If this is the case, the price point will be set to make the whole life-cycle cost of the ereader favourable when compared with the costs associated to prints and copies over the same period of time. I have no idea of how such figures are computed, but I don't expect them to comply with the rules used to set price points in the consumer market.

[Kumabjorn]

I doubt you get students to buy anything above $400. There are too many interesting devices available around that price point, the Sony would have to offer massive advantages to justify spending more than an iPad or Galaxy Note 10.1.

[BoldlyDubious]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I doubt you get students to buy anything above $400. There are too many interesting devices available around that price point, the Sony would have to offer massive advantages to justify spending more than an iPad or Galaxy Note 10.1.

Students? I was thinking about staff! They are the ones who require tons of prints and copies. In a university, printed scientific papers alone form piles on every professor's desk.

[Kumabjorn]

How many students and how many teachers are there in a University? 20 times as many students? That should determine the parameters for your market, besides teachers don't get paid enough to spend $1000 on a device.

[HarryT]

But the business community is far larger. Business people often spend their whole day reading, reviewing, and annotating documents, and they're the ones who do have the money. It was the enthusiastic adoption of the iPad by the business community which was largely responsible for its success.

[BoldlyDubious]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

How many students and how many teachers are there in a University? 20 times as many students? That should determine the parameters for your market, besides teachers don't get paid enough to spend $1000 on a device.

In my hypothesis, teachers (or employees of a company with high use of printed paper) receive the device from their employer for free, and are encouraged (or forced...) to reduce the number of copies and prints they require.

Let's say that one page of a copy or print costs 1 cent (of dollar or euro) and that each teacher prints 100 pages a day (average over 365 days of the year). That's 1 dollars or euros per day per teacher. Suppose that having the ereader halves the number of prints. This leads to save 0.5 dollars/euros per day per teacher. In a year, that's 182.5 dollars/euros.
If the ereader has a life of 3 years, the total saving is 3 x 182.5 = 547.5 dollars/euros. So, if the university (or whatever) can buy the device at 500 dollars/euros (for bulk purchases of 1000 items), it saves on prints and copies. So maybe it will buy them.

However, something that costs 500 dollars/euros when bought in batches of 1000, will probably cost double that figure to the consumer buying just one ereader...

[medard]

I don't think that this deveice will be over 300 - 350 Euros for a normal consumer.

The Sony T2 is 100 Euros now, I just got a second one as a backup. Although the Mobius Eink screen is much bigger than the T2 Eink screen, just one processor and just one bezel are needed. And this electronic stuff gets cheaper every week I assume.

If Sony is selling this deveice to schools and universities then I'd get cheaper. Just think about all the photocopies a normal student gets in a single months, and how expensive and ecologically harmful this is.

I'm really looking forward to this now. This looks much more suitable for educational purposes than any other deveice for me.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by petrucci

My original price of $350 is that of the Onyx Boox 92 in the US. I suspect that it is more difficult to make a larger panel than a smaller one. Further, the 6" readers sell well. The market for this larger reader may be more akin to that of the Kindle DX or Onyx Boox 92. The smaller market will result in a higher price. (However it could have a very large market if students and professionals who read pdfs want the device. I personally have been looking for such a device for years.)

I do not see the device costing less than $1,000. I will still buy it.

According to the official website, the Boox 60 costs $169.99, discounted from $299.00, which would make the Boox 6" device more expensive than the Sony 6" device, so your previous assertion that the name brand will be more expensive is clearly wrong.

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

I doubt you get students to buy anything above $400. There are too many interesting devices available around that price point, the Sony would have to offer massive advantages to justify spending more than an iPad or Galaxy Note 10.1.

According to the article in the OP it is designed for students. It will get a field trial at 3 Japanese universities before it goes on the market. Are devices more expensive in Japan?

[petrucci]

Given that Amazon just rereleased the Kindle DX for 299, I anticipate Sony's device will be very expensive. The DX does not even have the latest e-ink screen. At 299 it is not at all competitive with tablets. I think that Amazon would lower the price if they could.

Larger screen may be just as easy to produce as smaller ones, but they are more costly, because they use more materials, and have a higher rate of defects.

[ghero]

OK, first I want to suggest some features to this device:

1. The ability to output screen to projectors. I think this will be extreemly powerful to teachers/professors in education industry. This feature can potentially replace blackboard, so teachers dont have to stand up, wielding their arms and breathing chalks. However, it might need some marketing effort in order to let them to feel this benefit. This feature can also be useful for students and people in other business industry to do presentations.

2. Sony should make an app for android/ios, or as a build-in function in their original reader app, to let user to scan their physical documents with camera, into pdf (which many apps already can do this), and then allows them to conviniently transfer the scanned pdf to this note slate wirelessly. So people can conviniently store their existing physical documents into this device.

3. Group emailing functionalities. Can be useful to conviniently distribute annotated pdfs (as attachment to the email). Also, it will be cool to allow user to hand write email content (maybe as a picture embeded in the email content) instead of traditional typing, (which I find hand writing is actually even more traditional )

OK, that's about the feature suggestions. I also want to talk about pricing and marketing, I guess I will do this in my next reply, so I wont post something too long at a time.

[ghero]

OK, I will now talk about pricing. I suggest sony to release a full featured premium version of this, and in addition, release a couple more downgraded version (ripped version etc), to attack lower end of the market, those two ripped versions, in my mind being: reader version, and writer version.

(keep in mind the below suggestion does not take much account into market competition with similar devices, which there are not yet much device to compete with for now. But I assume not long after sony release this slate, if ever, there will be some additional competition factors to be taken into consideration.)

Reader version:
No pen support.
Maybe also restricted to open and view only one document/ebook at a time. (no jumping b/w documents conviniently between tags etc..)
Maybe totally rip out the annotation feature, so user cannot even hand write notes through regular touch input.
No ability to output screen to projectors.
No microSD expansion. (maybe less internal storage also)
Lower build quality.
Less battery life (or at least different in advertising)
Weaker memory and CPU.
less warrenty period and coverage, less customer support.
etc...

Target group: readers who just want a large screen device to view pdfs.
Possible price tag: $299.

Writer version:
Only have pen input, no regular touch input. Meaning user can only interact with the touch screen through the pen, if he lost it, he has to buy a new pen, or he cannot use the touch screen at all.
This version should reserve the note-taking feature.
Maybe restricted to only view one document at a time.
No ability to output screen to projectors.
No microSD expansion. (maybe less internal storage also)
Lower build quality.
Less battery life.
Weaker memory and CPU.
less warrenty period and coverage, less customer support.
etc...

Target group: students who do not want to afford the premium price.
Possible price: $399.

Premium version
Basically a full featured version, features both pen and traditional touch input, with good hardware and build quality, etc.
Possible price: $499 or higher
Also, even this might sound crazy, but sony can further up scale the premium version by making it water resistant, shock proof, dust proof etc, like their phones and tablets...

OK, thats all I can think for now.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious

In my hypothesis, teachers (or employees of a company with high use of printed paper) receive the device from their employer for free, and are encouraged (or forced...) to reduce the number of copies and prints they require.

Let's say that one page of a copy or print costs 1 cent (of dollar or euro) and that each teacher prints 100 pages a day (average over 365 days of the year). That's 1 dollars or euros per day per teacher. Suppose that having the ereader halves the number of prints. This leads to save 0.5 dollars/euros per day per teacher. In a year, that's 182.5 dollars/euros.
If the ereader has a life of 3 years, the total saving is 3 x 182.5 = 547.5 dollars/euros. So, if the university (or whatever) can buy the device at 500 dollars/euros (for bulk purchases of 1000 items), it saves on prints and copies. So maybe it will buy them.

However, something that costs 500 dollars/euros when bought in batches of 1000, will probably cost double that figure to the consumer buying just one ereader...

Well, I don't know what your experience working for a university is like, but in mine they could never force the university to adapt a single device, no matter how rational and economical the argument. Each and every department reserve the right to decide what is introduced and what isn't. So it would take more than a year before something like the Sony could be adapted even within a single department.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with your calculations, and obviously the savings will be that much bigger when you consider the material distributed among students. One paper and 40 students, the math becomes kind of obvious. Hence, my argument that this device has to be obtainable for the students in order to be a success.

Now, in the business world, as HarryT pointed out, it is a different story. But if memory serves the success of the iPad was mainly due to BYOD. Not that companies bought it in bulk for their employees.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

According to the article in the OP it is designed for students. It will get a field trial at 3 Japanese universities before it goes on the market. Are devices more expensive in Japan?

As a general rule yes, this was mainly due to the expensive yen, in order to hold market shares overseas many manufacturers had Japanese consumers subsidize their exports. However, two factors are in play today, one the yen is coming down, it is now trading around 100 yen to the dollar and I wouldn't be surprised to see it around 120 yen within six months, second they now face massive competition from Korea and China and are slowly realizing that they can not stick to outdated pricing models.

So prices between Japan and their overseas markets are much more in parity than they used to. One caveat though is devices limited to the domestic market. One good example are smartphones. There are lot of smartphones that are not sold outside Japan and they are exorbitantly expensive, but they are sold on plans and the monthly cost is acceptable to the Japanese consumer. Who knows, maybe Sony will release it with a SIM card so you can access Wikipedia.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by petrucci

Given that Amazon just rereleased the Kindle DX for 299, I anticipate Sony's device will be very expensive. The DX does not even have the latest e-ink screen. At 299 it is not at all competitive with tablets. I think that Amazon would lower the price if they could.

Larger screen may be just as easy to produce as smaller ones, but they are more costly, because they use more materials, and have a higher rate of defects.

You think that the price for the DX is new?
Article from 15th October 2012

Given the current proliferation of low-cost tablets with full-color, high-resolution screens – including Amazon's own Kindle Fire line – it also wasn't much of a bargain. The original DX debuted in 2009 for $489. Amazon lowered the price to $379 after a 2010 hardware refresh, but that's still $80 more than what an 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD goes for today.

Last week, Amazon quietly lowered the price of the DX to $299 – the same as the aforementioned Kindle Fire HD – in an apparent attempt to clear out its remaining stock.

According to wiki:

On July 8, 2009, Amazon reduced price of the Kindle 2 from the original $359 to $299.
[...]
On October 22, 2009, Amazon lowered the price on the international version from $279 to $259 and discontinued the U.S.-only model. On June 21, 2010, hours after Barnes & Noble lowered the price of its Nook, Amazon lowered the price of the Kindle 2 to $189.
[...]
Amazon announced the Kindle DX on May 6, 2009.
[...]
On July 1, 2010, Amazon released a new revision of the Kindle DX "Graphite". As well as dropping the price from $489 to $379, the new Kindle DX has an E Ink display with 50% better contrast ratio (due to new E Ink Pearl technology) and comes only in a "graphite" case color.

So when Amazon priced the DX at $489 the price for the 6" device was $359. You will notice that the price wasn't twice as high.

In 2010 there is a bigger difference between the prices of the 6" and the 9.7" devices, but that is because the prices for the 6" devices were lowered to compete with B&N. If Amazon plans to work on the DX again to compete with Sony you can expect a lower price.

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

As a general rule yes, this was mainly due to the expensive yen, in order to hold market shares overseas many manufacturers had Japanese consumers subsidize their exports. However, two factors are in play today, one the yen is coming down, it is now trading around 100 yen to the dollar and I wouldn't be surprised to see it around 120 yen within six months, second they now face massive competition from Korea and China and are slowly realizing that they can not stick to outdated pricing models.

So prices between Japan and their overseas markets are much more in parity than they used to. One caveat though is devices limited to the domestic market. One good example are smartphones. There are lot of smartphones that are not sold outside Japan and they are exorbitantly expensive, but they are sold on plans and the monthly cost is acceptable to the Japanese consumer. Who knows, maybe Sony will release it with a SIM card so you can access Wikipedia.

It would be good if the price expectations are closer. I expect that one question after the field trial will be: how much would you pay for this device?