Sony to produce 2 Japanese ereaders in December

[gardenstate]

These could be the PRS-350 and 650 with new firmware to display Japanese....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101125/...us_sony_reader

Sony to return to Japan e-reader market in December
Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp will re-enter Japan's electronic book market and open an online bookstore offering 20,000 titles, almost all in Japanese, in time for the year-end shopping rush, it said on Thursday.

Sony's Reader ebook goes on sale on December 10 at about 20,000 yen ($240) for a model with a 5 inch screen or 25,000 yen for a 6 inch screen.

It hopes to sell 300,000 Readers in the first year and win half the domestic market by 2012, Sony Marketing Japan president Nobuki Kurita told reporters.

The move marks the Japanese consumer electronics giant's return to a difficult market from which it pulled out along with Panasonic Corp in 2007 due to a lack of content. Sony offered less than 10,000 titles at the time.

Rivals in the domestic market include Apple Inc's iPad, launched in Japan in May, and Sharp Corp's Galapagos. Amazon does not yet offer Japanese titles for its Kindle reader.

Despite interest from readers who lack space to store books in their homes, electronic books have yet to gain widespread popularity in Japan, mainly due to the cautious attitude of publishers.

"I believe Japan has the potential to become the world's second- or third-largest market for e-readers, but there are some complex aspects to the market," said Sony Electronics Senior Vice President Fujio Noguchi.

In contrast with Japan, Sony offers 1.2 million titles via its Reader Store in North America.

Sony teamed up with KDDI Corp, Toppan Printing Co and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper in May to create the electronic book distribution business from which the online store will source books.

($1=83.51 Yen)

shown here..
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slides...913689664.jpg/

[igorsk]

Better photos:
http://mainichi.jp/select/biz/graph/...der/index.html
Japanese product page:
http://www.sony.jp/reader/
Basic interface seems to be the same, only translated. Vertical text display is shown, I wonder if they used EPUB or LRF for it. Japanese input is available for searching and notes. Two dictionaries: Genius Japanese-English English-Japanese and New Oxford American.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Vertical text display is shown, I wonder if they used EPUB or LRF for it.

And I can answer this. The specs page lists:
著作権保護付き書籍:XMDFファイル(.zbf、.mnh)
著作権保護なし書籍:XMDFファイル(.zbf)、EPUB ファイル(.epub) *3、
PDF ファイル(.pdf) *4、Text ファイル(.txt)

Protected formats: XMDF (.zbf, .mnh)
Unprotected formats: XMDF, EPUB, PDF, TXT.

EPUB has a peculiar footnote: "adheres to the OPS 2.0 specification. Japanese text is displayed as specified by the file".

I guess that means you cannot switch orientation in EPUB files. And it looks like XMDF will be the standard in Japan.

[zcqsimon]

it's very good to see sony ereader to support unicode

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by zcqsimon

it's very good to see sony ereader to support unicode

It supported Unicode from the first version.

Only 20,000 book titles? And they plan to sell 300,000 readers? I think Sony needs to pull its corporate head out of its butt.

[mrkapawutzis]

It looks like they have a greater variety in terms of official cases. I wish some of those colors came out over here.

[elcreative]

Why... book availability is dependent on the publishers not the eReader manufacturer.

This point is also only relevant in terms of the Japanese offerings by other eReader stores in Japan, any figures there? 20K may be substantial compared to others or it may be small but even English book availability started out as small.

Originally Posted by jswinden

Only 20,000 book titles? And they plan to sell 300,000 readers? I think Sony needs to pull its corporate head out of its butt.

[technogeekery]

Sony pulled out of the market here in 2007 because the publishers were not coming up with the content. Now that the iPad has made such a splash here, everyone is scrambling to catch up and produce a device - but content is still lagging well behind. The Sony store here in Japan will have about 20 000 titles, but this will include newspapers, manga, magazines as well as books.

Sharp are launching the Galapagos on the same day (Android-based, 5.5" and 10" LCD colour versions) and they have 30000 titles available.

It doesn't appear that Sony Japan will have any connection or link to the Sony reader store in the USA or access to its books - although presumably they will be negotiating with foreign publishers in due course to get local distribution rights to foreign titles. Until then, I'll still have to buy my books from offshore, circumventing geographical restrictions where possible. Sigh... But at least i can buy a 650 to replace my aging 700 - wonder if I can download English interface from Sony USA...

[technogeekery]

I went into Yamada Denki yesterday, one of the biggest electronic retailers here in Japan. They had lines of people queuing up to pace orders for the Galapagos, which was not available in-store. The Sony WAS in store, but nobody knew about it, and eventually I tracked it down tucked away in a quiet corner. No special promotion, no fuss, and no apparent interest in it in the store. Not sure why Sony is being so low key about the launch, its wierd.

Anyway, the new PRS-650 is very nice, I'd like to get one. The screen menus are switchable to English, so the book is very usable. But while it supports epub, it does not support USA DRM'ed epubs - so for me to upgrade I'd have to liberate all my books.

I'm strongly tempted to do that anyway, as it really irritates me that I can't use my bought & paid for epubs anywhere and on any machine.

[lack]

I think it is not just Japan, others in usa and europe have said the same thing too. I really don't understand their thinking. As if they want this to just be a word-of-mouth product.

That or they just clueless about advertising in modern internet hype-filled world.
It is ironic that the first campaign they had in the yester-yesterday's launch of japan ebook store was 'The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs'

OOT: yamada denki is one of the biggest? I never knew that!

[Mr. Dalliard]

Originally Posted by lack

OOT: yamada denki is one of the biggest? I never knew that!

Fancy not knowing that...

How long have you been living in "worst No.1" Osaka, lack?

[technogeekery]

I managed to liberate my current library of Sony ebooks, so I went out and bought one of these for my wife. Luckily the user interface is switchable from Japanese to English, and now that my pdfs are all drm free, I could copy them across to her device and they work perfectly. Happy :-) Its a good machine.

[injapan]

interesting thread, I wish I read it before I bought my prs350 here in Japan

[lack]

Originally Posted by Mr. Dalliard

Fancy not knowing that...

How long have you been living in "worst No.1" Osaka, lack?

Gonna be 2 years come next spring.

I spent 1.5 in Yokohama.

Really? worst no 1? I gotta go out more...
But I like it here, compared to Yokohama it feels more like my home country ~~


I see you from Osaka too. Been long here?