HK Tech Phooey

Why the Chinese have come out with their own Kindle

Jul 22, 2009 21:56

At the Tokyo Digital Publishing Fair held earlier this month, the Founder Group Corp., a Japanese unit of Peking University and a major player in the Chinese IT sector, introduced a "knock-off" e-reader named "we-Found", which closely resembles the Kindle 2 from Amazon.

Well, this should not come as a surprise as one can always find great knock-offs from practically anything that's selling in the streets of China. But for a reputable firm to come up with a knock-off, you know something is not right.

Like the Kindle 2, the we-Found features the same 6-inch display with the same black-and-white e-Ink screen. But unlike the Kindle 2 which does not support non-Latin character sets, the we-Found is built to display double-byte characters which enable the display of Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.

Since the release of Kindle back in November 2007, Amazon has failed to bring the Kindle outside of the US. Plans for the UK and Europe launch lagged behind due to problems in signing up suitable Wi-Fi and mobile carriers (latest word on the street is that Amazon is close to announcing a rollout date in the UK, probably before Christmas 2009).

In light of the above, the huge market that can be tabbed into, especially that of mainland China, Japan and Korea, I'm sure the we-Found is going to be a hit, especially if it gets to launch before the Kindle does in Europe. It would be interesting to see how the we-Found will fare upon its release by end of this year, particularly given its attractive price tag of US$200 vs. the US$299 for the Amazon Kindle 2.

Honestly, who cares about knock-offs if they truly work, that is for the consumer, of course.

Source: Digital East Asia

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