[JLYates]

I have only just bought my reader (Sony 900) and I immediately thought, who are you reaching out to, who is the target audience? Someone beat me to it, however in stating that that should be the first step.

It needs to be decided on if you are focusing on professional/business type buyers; college students; special needs groups (e.g. vision impaired); or even general public.
Then, ask them what they would want. The general public makes it hard as there is so much variety that you will end up with a product that is a mixture of everything and unapealing to everyone because it is weak in all areas.

As a college grad student, I would want to have a variety of fonts and sizes of text and darker ink, a touch screen with stylus, internet (wireless) acess, a good dictionary, ability to catagorize different folders and to be able to cross reference, to not be limited to one format, not just epub, or adobe or any others, but universal. I would want to be able to have pdf articles from professional journals but also be able to download some "pleasure books" for a break from the agony of reading boring articles. Plenty of space to store the information, but also the ability to have SD so I can save. Ability to take notes, highlight, and perhaps draw, and a keyboard and a place to store a lightweight light or else have a backlight that I can change from brighter to dim.
Color is not needed, nor is music, games.
If just an ereader for pleasure, touch screen with stylus, differnt size text, fonts, darker ink, backlight, audio, dictionary, ability to catagorize lists, cross reference by authors, titles, genres, series, stand alone books, and maybe even sub categories, such as my favorite genre, paranormal then vampires, shifters and others, or mystery then US or British, contemporary, historical.
Again, I don't need color, music, games
If for a specific group, such as those who are vision imparied, whether due to age or other, larger size fonts and text, darker and thicker fonts and text, larger size of symbols, such as home, options; touch screen but also buttons, that are larger size for easy of seeing and touching, better quality of audio.
Decide on who you want to attract most, who you want to be the major buyers of the products and then make it to fit that group or a blending of two groups such as professional and college or readers and vision impaired.
I don't remember who said it, but this quote fits here, you can please some of the people all the time, but not all of the people all the time.
It is impossible to make a ereader to please everyone, figure out who you want to please, encourage to buy your product and then focus on pleasing them.