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Originally Posted by pdam
Personally I am perplexed at the current Development roadmap for the Iliad.
Given the Sony device is now on the market with lots of content and loads of marketting spend behind it ... and given that, other than the obvious size difference and the ability to write notes (but hey a notebook costs $2!), the current Iliad software implementation doesn't do much more than the Sony - why aren't iRex concentrating on the features that will differenciate and show a value difference - like annotation, bookmarking, website interaction / form filling through the use of the Wacom pen etc?
It seems odd that these differentiators are not the focus of development (to me at least).
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I think iRex recently made this all crystal clear.
Battery life of 10 hours? More than good enough for a business user where the unit only has to last one work shift and then be recharged over night.
Add more features to xpdf/minimo? Why? Business users need specific unique features for their specialized vertical markets that have to be developed one-off for them: eFlybook being a perfect example.
iDS development? Only if one of their business users needs it, which I'm sure eFlybook gets their new charts distributed via (while we sit around with empty download directories.)
I'm also not so certain how much larger Sony's San Diego Operation is compared to iRex, iRex just bragged of getting their second round of financing. And I guarantee its easier to get loans and manufacturing contract float when Philips is your Daddy rather than a couple guys in a garage i.e. they can play the plucky startup "under dog" but this under dog eats from a gold dish.
Sony has lots of titles? Far fewer than Gemstar had. Probably less than Amazon had before their purge of all titles not Mobi. Loads of marketing spend, I haven't seen any ads, no buses, no internet ads on CNN etc... In fact their whole campaign seems a bit on the cheap side. They even had so much confidence in the product that they sold all the units they would commit to make until Oct 17th on the first day. A first day of ordering where it seemed like everyone was uh pre-ordering right?
It remains to be seen if the percentage of frustrated customers come Christmas is higher for the PS3 or the Sony Reader.
And I can tell you that right now Sony is about to take the same amount of time to ship my Sony Reader to me as it took to get my iLiad out of iRex!
Is iRex playing to their strengths? Yes.
Did we all volunteer to buy non-consumer units, give them tons of feedback with no promise of them even listening to us? Yes.
Has iRex allowed us to let them lose focus? No.
The only thing I blame iRex for is for claiming they grok'd OSS.
Are they about to learn all about it? Oh Yes!!!