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That article doesn't mesh well with reality, at least at the Best Buy store in my city. I recently went through a spate of trying different reader models from that store, so I was in there frequently for a while. The Sony display has the 350 and 950. By asking one of the salespersons to check their inventory on the 650 just to see if they had any in the back room, and making further casual conversation with him about the Sony readers, I was able to determine that their entire stock was on display, none in the back. He said what they had on display sold extremely slowly and he couldn't remember the last time they actually got a new shipment in. I purchased both a 350 and a 950 and returned them both for various reasons. In both cases, the inventory on the shelf that I had removed was never replaced over the course of a few weeks - I took them down by 1 each, and their count on the shelf stayed that way.
The local Borders here also sells Sony eReaders, and they used to have the 650 and the 350. Now they only have the 350. The sales folks there said the 650 seemed to sell fairly well after it was introduced, but they hadn't seen any in a long time, and as far as he could tell it was an online only purchase. The 350 apparently doesn't sell very fast.
I can only conclude that the Sony products here in my town, at least, hardly sell at all. I also recently called the Sony Style store down in Tyson's Corner (big shopping suburb of Washington, D.C.) to enquire about their stock of 650s. The salesman on the phone said they had no readers of any model in stock and hadn't had any for a long time, and what they had been told was that Sony was essentially just running down their stock; he said as far as he knew, Sony intends their recently announced tablets to be the next gen replacements for their eReader line.
None of this surprises me at all. There may be a small, dedicated fan base of the Sony eReaders, and I really enjoyed my 650 while I had it, but Sony doesn't advertise these things at all. I work in the travel industry, and I see countless people sitting on airplanes and in airport gate waiting areas, and I can't remember the last time I saw someone reading a Sony - plenty of people seem to use Kindles or iPads, but not much else.
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Yeah, I'm surprised that Sony Readers sell at at all. I wonder how other people heard about it, at least in the U.S. I did research to find an ereader that fills my need and found out about the Sony Readers. But you're right, I don't think Sony in stores would sell. Sony Reader has no exposure, no ads, no commercials, in the U.S.
Actually I wonder how Sony's non-PS3/camera/TV/blu-ray/computer products sell at all. Do people actually buy their Walkman? I see a lot of those in the Best Buy also.
If Sony gets rid of their e-ink reader, well, that'll be a sad day because a lcd tablet is not the same thing. Dedicated fans of the Sony will have to look elsewhere for an alternative. But it seems that in the article, Sony knows that there are people that can't stand lcd for reading and want a dedicated e-ink reader.
From article:
He added, “you’ll continue to see devices that are easy on the eyes. Reading on a device with the equivalent of a lightbulb shining behind it is difficult for some people. E-ink devices are not doomed; people will have multiple reading devices.” Indeed he continually used the phrase, “e-ink devices are designed to replace traditional books,” unapologetically. “When the first black and white Sony Reader came out, everyone said, what’s this? The world is in color. But the Sony Reader is not a Swiss Army knife.”