Rumor: New Sony Reader in August?

David Carnoy | Jul 29, 2009

Will Sony soon have a PRS-505 replacement? (Credit: Sony)

In recent weeks there's been lots of news about new e-readers hitting the market. The Cool-er is out. Samsung's just released its first e-book reader in Korea. Plastic Logic is talking up its partnerships with Barnes & Noble and AT&T. And the Kindle 2 had a price drop to US$299.

But what's up with Sony? True, its US$400 PRS-700 hasn't been out that long, but surely the company has to put out a new e-reader some time soon or risk losing that precious piece of market and mind share it currently enjoys in the e-reader space?

Well, we've barely heard a peep about a new Reader, but there's been a little activity over on the MobileRead forums. Back in June, forum member forkyfork wrote that he heard from a manager at Books-a-Million that Sony is coming out with a new e-reader in August. The manager "mentioned that it's going to have Wi-Fi, bigger screen and more memory. When I asked him if it would have a touchscreen, he said 'no'. When asked what the price point would be, he said 'most likely US$300', which might explain why they (Sony) are trying to clear out the PRS-505's now".

Now, it's hard to put much stock in a message board comment from a random reader, especially one who goes by forkyfork, but I've heard from a few sources outside Sony that they expect the Japanese company to have something new fairly soon. So why not August?

Hopefully, the new Reader, whenever it does arrive, will be only sightly larger and not blown up to the size of the Kindle DX.

When Sony released the PRS-700, it did talk about how it was looking at a wireless option, so it would seem likely that the next model would offer this feature. Also, while we like the touchscreen interface of the PRS-700, the screen did suffer from glare and contrast issues. We also assume a non-touch model would be cheaper to produce, which would help Sony keep the retail price of a new unit under US$300. At this point, it really needs to match the Kindle 2's price, or better yet, go slightly cheaper.

Comments?

Via CNET Crave

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