You think e-books are readily available and enjoyable these days? At least, new e-book readers come to the market regularly like horrible news from Iraq do to the ears of Mr Bush, and vanish soon into thin air. Sony, Matsushita/Panasonic, Toshiba... Digital roadsides are strewn with the carcass of these clever hardware.

Words Gear BKE-T3, manufactured by Matsushita/Panasonic One more e-book reader to try the breakthrough.

Still undaunted, new ones keep on popping up into the slaughter house scene because the concept of e-book itself has steadily increased the weight. More and more people peep into e-books from their PCs, and, more frequently, from their K-tais. Maybe the next push of dedicated e-book readers can tip the odds and cause the long-awaited breakthrough.

One more eager sacrifice has jumped into this murderous market with its eyes wide open. Words Gear Co. of off-Akihabara, a joint venture of Matsushita Electric and two more publishing/TV biggies, has released another e-book reader, Words Gear BKE-T3. This hardware is actually the successor of widely praised Matsushita Sigma Book (released in 2004), which represented one of the most beautiful examples of absolute and total commercial failure. Will the new Words Gear follow the fate of its predecessor? Most likely, I'm afraid to say.

Words Gear's screen has nothing spectacular. A quite ordinary 5.6-inch SVGA color LCD (1,024 x 600 pixels). Unlike its predecessor, Panasonic Sigma Book, with two pages of LCD, Words Gear sports only one page. Portrait when reading e-book, and landscape when viewing pictures or video clips.

Incredibly, Words Gear lacks wireless connection in this era of cheap Wi-Fi chips. Therefore, downloading data (both e-book and media files) is very much troublesome. First, down to your PC from the Internet. Then through USB cable or via SD memory card, down to Words Gear. Please, don't lose your patience.

As a media player, rather limited capability: Only AAC/JPEG/MPEG4(ASF) files can be played/shown.

Power: Lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Fully charged, 5 hours of reading time assured. Reading/page-turning is controlled by a tiny touch-sensor dial on the side. You can control all these functions using only your left thumb (in the case of a lefty, the right thumb). So your right hand can be utilized for some unknown, more important task, I guess.

Data download by SD memory. A bit troublesome.	Turns to landscape position when viewing a video clip.

Presently, there is a vicious circle about this kind of gear. Because there are not enough readers around, the demand of e-book data stagnates. And because not many e-books are being demanded, nobody buys its reader gear. To solve this tautology, a simple Sonyy PS2 business model would not be drastic enough. Supplying e-book readers in quantity with some substantial red ink, to recoup later from the increased software sales.

No, definitely, some quantum leap would be required. For example, how about the classic French Minitel business model? French Telecom gave away millions of Minitel terminals to every single telephone subscriber, totally free. Then, even the conservative and stingy French telephone users started jacking into Minitel service in droves. French Telecom, all in all, harvested handsomely from service and software usage, having recovered the cost of cheap Minitel terminals completely.

So can Words Gear mimic this ancient success model? Your Mobile Ojisan doubts it, somehow. By the way, Words Gear presently sells at whopping 41,700 yen (US$347). French Minitel terminal in heyday cost only US$50-odd.

 

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