IDC released their quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker, estimating device shipments around the world, for the third quarter of 2010. They tabulate 2.7 million ereaders shipped to vendors in period, with the US comprising three-quarters of the market, or 2.025 million units. Their tablet count remains even higher, at 4.8 million units, up from 3.3 million units in the second quarter, with Apple still holding about 90 percent of that market. IDC says that Amazon comprised 1.1 million of those ereader units (a 41.5 percent market share worldwide), with Pandigital just barely taking second place with its line (which […]
eReaders
More on Google’s eBook Acquisition
There are a lot of stories out there with wild speculation about how Google might use the newly-acquired eBook Technologies to expand their ebook program. This piece at Kindle Review provides some good factual detail on ETI’s assets, including their existing ereader devices, and their patents (for such systems as advertisements in ebooks). Separately, a Google spokesperson provided us with a slightly expanded explanatory statement: “We believe that ETI can help us provide users with a richer digital reading experience on tablets and other emerging hand-held devices. For example, ETI’s Pub renderer supports pagination of complex layouts. We are excited […]
More eNews: Sony Claims Big Plans; Grandinetti In LAT; Spring Design Suit Against BN Moves Forward
Sony‘s deputy president for the Digital Reading Business Division Fujio Noguchi pretends that the company remains serious about the ebook business, telling an Asian tech web site, “We are aiming to acquire a share of 40% in the global electronic book market in fiscal 2012.” (The site mistakenly believes that Sony has been “leading” the US ebook market along with Amazon….) The company is looking to develop reading-focused color epaper screens: “I believe that color e-paper should be employed for e-book readers with a focus on displaying texts. So, we are sending such requests to e-paper device makers.” The LAT […]
Now Kindle Editions, Of Course
Amazon waved their pr hands furiously during Barnes & Noble’s introduction of Nook Color, and today they make news for the possibility the company is developing their own browser-based equivalent to Google eBooks. To be fair, and clear, the company did not make any announcement: a short piece in Computerworld with just a glimmer of information has spread far and wide. Amazon told Computerworld they will offer some kind of unspecified “demonstration” today of a revised, expanded vision of their Kindle for Web app, which currently only shows and shares book samples. Just like Google eBooks, it will “enable users […]
All Kinds of Etc., and People News, Too
Hachette Book Group is celebrating making Crain’s Best Places to Work in NYC for the second year in a row, rising to No. 19 (from 24 a year ago). Norton has named Edward Crutchley the next managing director of its UK subsidiary, effective February 1, 2011, after Alan Cameron retires. Cameron is the firm’s founding managing sirector, joining Norton in 1979. Crutchley has been most recently regional sales director, institutional online sales at John Wiley UK, which he joined when the parent company purchased Blackwell. (Norton uses Wiley UK’s warehouse.) Steven Wilson has joined Book Sales Inc. New York as […]
More Vaporware? Txtr Said to be Scrppd
Slashgear says that a former employee of Germany’s Txtr says that their planned ereader “has been quietly ditched while the company attempts to work on its software ebookstore business.”Slashgear