The budding market for electronic reading devices is about to get two powerful new entrants: Best Buy and Verizon.
Noah Berger for The New York Times
On Wednesday, iRex Technologies, a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics that already makes one of Europe’s best-known e-readers, plans to announce that it is entering the United States market with a $399 touch-screen e-reader.
Best Buy’s involvement could give an additional lift to sales. Starting this week, Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and iRex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices. Best Buy previously sold e-book devices only on its Web site and in limited tests in stores.
Owners of the new iRex DR800SG will be able to buy digital books and newspapers wirelessly over the 3G network of Verizon, which is joining AT&T and Sprint in supporting such devices. And by next month, the iRex will be sold at a few hundred Best Buy stores, along with the Sony Reader and similar products.
The iRex has an 8.1-inch touch screen and links directly to buy digital books in Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore and periodicals from Newspapers Direct, a service that offers more than 1,100 papers and presents them onscreen largely as they appear in print form.
Its new consumer product offers some techie features that rivals do not. It contains a 3G Gobi radio from Qualcomm, the wireless component manufacturer, which will allow iRex owners to buy books wirelessly when they travel abroad. By contrast, the wireless modem in the Kindle works only on Sprint’s network in the United States. As with the Kindle, the price of the iRex includes unlimited wireless access.
The iRex can also handle the ePub file format, a widely accepted industry standard, which means that owners can buy books from other online bookstores that use ePub and transfer texts onto the iRex.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/te...1&ref=business