Wireless Enabled Gizmos
New Wi-Fi Enabled Gizmos (WEGs) are springing up by the day. This week the iPod Touch. It’s an iPod that looks like an iPhone. It has a 3.5″screen, the Multitouch interface, WiFi, and the Safari Web browser.
And there is a WiFi version of the iTunes store to buy songs over wireless on the iPod Touch and the iPhone; these songs can be transferred later to a computer.
And today the word is that both Amazon and Google are entering the eBook business by year-end, joining Sony and others who already have products (the image above is Sony’s Reader).
The new Amazon offering is called The Kindle and will compete directly with Sony. Google will begin charging users to read the full text of some of the books they’ve indexed, according to a variety of high-confidence industry sources.
Amazon has been hyper-aggressive of late, adding e-payments and an iTunes competitor. The Kindle will be a device to read books: black and white screen, internet connectivity via WiFi, and a keyboard to take notes and surf the web. The device, which will bear a price of about $450, will interact with an eBook service run by Amazon.
The WiFi connectivity is a major selling point over the Sony Reader, which sells for $300.
Google doesn’t appear to be rolling out a device (well, besides the Google Phone), but will help spark the creation of more WEGs by virtue of their full-text book database. They will soon begin charging users to view some full text books that they’ve indexed, although this appears to be distinct from the Google Book Search Library Project.
Our ANWO survey on WEGs is complete, and the results with our accompanying analysis are now available for purchase [delivered electronically: a 35-page Powerpoint and an Excel Market Sizing model that allows "what if?" analysis], via our eStore.
This report is also available in Japanese.
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