[porkupan]

They were in stock for a few hours, until Sony ran out some time this afternoon. Seems that they are really having a very hard time manufacturing enough of those devices. I don't know if there is a supply chain problem, a parts shortage, a manufacturing capacity problem (400,000 FoxCon employees too busy building those iPad 2's, Nook Colors, Kindles and 5000 other hot products?), or what. Obviously, Sony buyers have majorly screwed up with those readers, and they are not able to fix the problem. The mystery of disappearing covers is another example of this craziness.

I guess, we shouldn't expect deliveries of the 950's any time soon, those being manufactured in the Japanese factories. But whatever is going on in China, it is one big mess. The fact that no major tech publication seems to be paying attention to this weird deficit just confirms that most tech observers in the U.S. have generally given up on Sony Reader. That's too bad as this year's crop of readers was really very very successful.

I wonder if anyone of any significance at Sony actually noticed that we have been discussing the reader shortage in this forum. I do not see them making a serious effort to resolve it. Perhaps the people on the inside don't even know that a Sony Reader (with a possible exception of 350) is virtually impossible to find in stores on online.