BPN 1648: Google starts e-book sales in the Netherlands (4)

The end of the e-reader

Overlooking the e-book landscape, there are some observations to be made and conclusions drawn. Two of the most dramatic conclusions are that the present e-reader will not have a long life and that the e-book will not remain just a pdf or digital word file with a black and white illustration.

The e-book started out on a mainframe computer as a digital file with words in capitals. E-books have grown along with technology of minicomputers and PCs as well as the (sub)notebooks. From 1985 CD-ROM was seen as a carrier for the digital book file. (The German software company Dataware used the slogan: Goodbye Gutenberg, Hello CD-ROM in 1987). In 1991 Sony started to  store books on minidisks and by 1997 the e-readers were launched amongst others by Franklin with the Rocket eBook. This concept has continued so far, till in 2010 the iPad and Samsung Galaxy tablet came around. This has led to a range of e-book delivery through internet:

- streaming through internet;
- storage of digital file on PCs as well as (sub)notebooks;
- storage of digital files on customised e-readers;
- storage of digital files on tablets.

Of these four ways of delivery the e-readers look to be losing the game in more than one sense. The e-book has on e-readers a pdf and e-pub format. The e-readers have either an e-Ink  screen or a TFT display. The stored file basically contains static information consisting of text and sometimes illustrations in black and white. In comparison with tablets which can play colour graphics, video and music, these devices are multifunctional. In comparison this means that tablets will be the winners as storage as well as streaming media for e-books (used by Dutch public libraries). So the end of e-readers is nigh.

E-readers are not only at the end of their life cycle because of their limited functionality (storage of digital file, black/white screen, special screen for reading in sunlight). But E-book will also develop from storing static information files into text files with moving graphic illustrations and movie fragments. And for this purpose tablets will be used.

In the World Summit Award competitions we have seen at least three e-book projects of the next generation to come: Hiboo, Rooftops at dawn and Oz Book.

From France comes Hiboo, books to explore. Hiboo is a collection of digital books for teenagers on the iPad. Each book is chosen according to editorial choices based on travel, adventure and fantasy. The approach is to offer tools for reading, an immersive environment, an interactive edge and community-based solutions for a new reading experience. 
 

From Hungary comes Rooftops at dawn - literative walk. The product, an application is a mixture of an book, a city walk and an exhibition experience – brought to you on location. The interactive urban walk provides a new way to experience classic literature as well as to experience the city as never before, along with being able to discover parts of local history embedded into a new digital framework.

From Lithuania comes the Oz Book.  “Oz Book”  is an interactive book for both children and the entire family, based on L. Frank Baum’s original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Sixty interactive illustrations featuring beautiful scenes, vivacious music, and special sound effects let children feel the spirit of the adventurous journey to Emerald City, together with all the engaging characters. By lighting candles in the dark, the child finds the sneaky Wizard, helps Scarecrow to whisk angry crows away, or sees Emerald City with green glasses. Powered by a realistic physics engine allowing fast content accessibility, the award-winning Oz Book features a user-friendly interface, magnificent particle simulations, accelerometer and aquatic and/or fire effects, as well as a memory game and magic pictures that come to life as users touch or tilt the iPad. OzBook can be accessed in four different languages including English, Lithuanian, German and Russian.

These are three examples of what is to come. No longer static text dictates the file ; no longer technology dictates storage; but now the interactive storyline and interactive assets will offer a range of opportunities. They will range from a fiction story illustrated with interactive drawings to texts with movies. Non-fiction e-books will become apps containing a storyline with interactive multimedia assets based on a timeline. With this new push the traditional e-reader, based on e-Ink technology, will disappear, while interactive apps take their place.   

Update 27 July 2013
I just saw the rendition of a classic children's tale: The Winds in the Willow. Produced for the iPad, this classic tale has been released by UK-based innovator of digital books BeyondTheStory® as part of its +Book range. Narrator Stephen Fry introduces readers to each chapter and reads selected extracts of the adventures of Mr Toad, Ratty, Mole, and Badger. In addition, colourful animations connect the reader to the wonderful world of the riverbank and Toad Hall – a world loved by many for more than one hundred years. BeyondTheStory®, which built its unique app platform in the UK, has a string of enhanced e-books with the revised version of Kings and Queens by David Starkey, binging to life two thousand years of Britain’s monarchy; the award-winning Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl.

 

BPN 1578 E-book's 40th anniversary (part 2)

A third wave started in 2001, when E-Ink, a development company near Boston (Mass), started to develop a new display technology, which would offer a still screen and a long battery life only page turns would consume energy. By 2006 the first E-Ink based e-readers started to leave the factory. A Philips spin-off Irex Technologies in The Netherlands started to sell the Iliad at a heavy price of more than 600 euro. The new display was a real success and seen as the future for e-books, energy consumption long lasting, portability high. The only real disadvantages were the black/white screen and no movie facility.  A breakthrough came when Amazon released the Kindle on November 19, 2007. The devices caught on and the market effect started to come: more e-books were published and the prices for e-readers got lower to the level of consumer devices. By 2010 there were e-readers on the market on just under 200 euro. This also stimulated the production and sales of e-books and forced many a publisher at least to try it out. Also the standardisation of the format contributed to this. While Amazon kept to the Moby Pocket format, developed by one of their own subsidiaries, in the UK and some Western Europe countries EPUB was introduced as a format by publisher’s associations with even liberal copying facilities. 

The fourth wave is now under way. The tablet vs. e-reader race has started. The tablet has come out of the laboratory at last. Since the launch of the Newton messagePad 100 in 1993, the tablet had gone back to the laboratory. The display, display writing and telecom technology were not mature enough. By the end of the nineties, HP launched it tablet computer, but it was still more a PC than a tablet. But the pace had been set. By 2000 Nokia had developed a tablet, which was intended as a personal entertainment centre; but it only left the laboratory since 2007. The tablet world started seriously with the launch of Apple’s iPad on March 12, 2010. It was followed by a slew of tablets. The iPad and other tablets had also apps for reading e-books. The screen was still tft with interference, but better; battery life was lower than E-Ink e-readers. So now the question came up do I buy both devices or just a tablet. It also meant that the E-Ink e-reader had disadvantages over against the tablets: limited multi-functionality, a black/white screen and no movie functionality. Advantages over the tablets for e-readers are: a better display technology without interference and a longer battery life. But at least, this race is delivering a wide market for e-books.

What will help the promotion of e-books more? Of course the best of both worlds: E-Ink like technology for display and energy, colour screens, movie facilities and better internet facilities. Research is going into that direction. Two indicators into that direction are Liquid Vista, again a Philips spin-off, and the tire manufacturer Bridgestone. Laboratory samples of colour displays have been shown on exhibitions. Liqua Vista has announced that it will be on the market with the screen product in 2012.  As Liqua Vista is also a Philips spin-off, a similar quality product as the Iliad of the  Irex Technologies is looked for, but with a more acceptable price than the Iliad of the former Irex Technologies.

While the e-reader circus continues its technology perfection, the portfolio of e-books is increasing. Springer Verlag already recognises a contribution of e-books in its turn-over. But also publishers of novels are seriously busy with the market of e-books, using marketing tricks like offering a chapter for free or a free book in a time window. E-book in fact has intruded into almost all genres of the book trade, less coffee table and art books. For many publishers e-book has become a standard routine to launch the electronic edition with the print edition.

It has taken more than 30 years for e-books to flourish. But with user friendly devices and a well filled portfolio of e-books, Mr Hart had many reasons to look back and celebrate this July 4th, 2011. 

BPN 1578 

web roi

BPN 1577 E-book's 40th anniversary (part 1)

July 4th is a traditional American holiday, Independence Day. Unique for that day is the 40th anniversary of the e-book. It took e-book from 1971 up to now to become an accepted medium. One can say that the introduction of the Kindle e-reader on November 19, 2007 gave e-book an official status. That is 37 years after its start. What took the e-book four waves to surface? Is it basically culture and/or technology?

To start with book culture. Books have had a long tradition of culture carriers. The education and culture of a family could be measured by the amount of books and in the 18th century even by the meter. Books have been scarce until the French revolution. The Paris based university Sorbonne had only a room full of books when the French Revolution started. Now the library is measured in kilometres. Besides printed books have become common goods. Anyone can buy them, if they want. For many people reading books has become a daily habit. Take the underground in London and you always find people not reading a newspaper, but a book. Often those people have become fanatic about reading and could be dubbed the ink tifosi. They have not lived a day without reading a print book! But a new generation of digital natives is coming on, which has known gadgets from pregnancy.

But the habit is changing. Just look for people waiting to catch a plane or people at the beach. E-readers and e-books are becoming accepted. This after all these years….

It all started with Michael Hart. He was working with a mainframe computer, one that occupied a whole room. Having spent a long time on jobs, he was given some computer time for his personal interest. The story goes that he accepted the gift of computer hours, went back to his office and came out, saying that he would like to start a series of digital books. So he started typing his first publication in capitals, which was not uncommon at that time as Teletype (TTY) was quite common in the transmission industry. Also the inventor of the @ symbol in e-mail, Roy Tomlinson, wrote his first message in capitals and again the Gettysburg Address.

For a long time Michael Hart added e-books, being non-copyrighted books in the public domain. By 1990 his project had grown and people had offered him help in retyping books. The Gutenberg project gave some body to the organisation. From that point onwards the volume of non-copyrighted  e-books in the public domain started to expand at great pace.

Reading e-books had taken a different turn from reading them from a terminal, linked to a mainframe or a minicomputer since 1977, when PC’s got introduced. After 1980 e-books could be stored in internal memory on floppy discs, usually more than one. But from 1985 CD-ROM with 600Mb storage capacity became the e-book carrier of plain text or of interactive books produced by the Voyager Interactive company.

But for publishers it was clear that they liked to have a customised e-reader for e-books. So when Akita Morito, the CEO of Sony, in 1986 proclaimed the minidisk, being able to store 200Mb, the carrier of e-books, publishers sat back and waited eagerly. It would take another five years before Sony had worked out an e-reader based on the technology of the Data Discman. It was launched in Japan in 1991, in the USA and UK in 1992 and in 1993 in the rest of Europe. The smart move of Sony was to start co-operation with committees of publishers and software developers. So every country had its Electronic Book Committee to get familiar with the product and set up a publishing program.

© Jak Boumans, 2011

But the device did not catch the fancy of book readers. Despite marketing moves like the introduction of the book Sliver, a book by Ira Levine, first as an electronic book followed by the print edition, e-books did not catch on. Actually e-readers did not catch on, as the devices were too heavy (450 grams) to carry around, the tft screen black/white and  too small, while battery life was too short and the price a hefty one of more than 1200 Dutch guilders (roughly 550 euro). By the end of 1985 356 e-books, Had originated from the USA and Western Europe, as listed in the TFPL Directory of CD-ROM.

In the meantime internet was coming up and attempts for producing tablets were in motion. Roger Fiddler of the US newspaper publisher was carrying a prototype around the world, showing the future of newspapers on a tablet. But the main change in thinking came from internet. This network should be the distribution channel for e-books. Besides delivering the files, at least in the future, it should also become a virtual cash point. And a variety of tablets, with amongst others Rocket e-Book, came on the market, while print publishers were hesitant, fearing piracy and the same fate as publishers of music. However there was more success in this second wave of e-readers than with the Sony devices. The e-readers became more portable, but they still had a tft screen and a short battery life. Their price started to get lower, very slowly.

(continues)

BPN 1577

BPN 1562 Samsung acquires Liquavista

This is great news for the e-book and iPad world. Technology analogue to the e-Ink display technology will now be further developed and implemented by Samsung but with colour and video. Liquavista is interesting to display producers for their LCD processes can handle 90 percent of the Liquavista production process; it will make the production process into a LCD 2.0 exercise. This will make the display cheaper than the e-Ink display at its start.
I gues that we will see Liquavista displays implemented by next year. Guess that the Samsung Galaxy will be the first implementation. It will be a winner superceding the iPad.

This is the press release of this morning:

Eindhoven (The Netherlands) - 20 January 2011: Today, Liquavista BV., announced that it has been acquired by Samsung Electronics in a buyout of all shares from the past shareholders. Under the terms of this acquisition, Liquavista will be a fully owned affiliate of Samsung Electronics.
“We are thrilled by this event” said Johan Feenstra, Liquavista’s Founder and newly appointed CEO of Liquavista, “the outright acquisition of Liquavista by the largest electronics company in the world is the fulfilment of a strategy dating back to the original spin-out and, confirmation of the disruptive potential that our technology will have in the display market.”
The acquisition has also resulted in a number of changes in Liquavista’s management team. Johan Feenstra has succeeded Guy Demuynck as the company’s CEO .

“In the future, consumers will need products that not only support full color and video but offer readability in all lighting conditions and gives them ultimate freedom and portability.” Johan Feenstra added, “Being part of Samsung, we can all be sure that Electrowetting Display Technology will find its way to the market in the fastest possible time.”

BPN 1562

BPN 1416 Colour screen and video on ereader

It is coming, the colour screen and video on an ereader. So far ereader have black/white screens and are slow in internet representation. The Eindhoven based company Liquavista, a Philips Research spin-off, is now showing a colour screen and video at CES in Las Vegas thanks to the technology of electrowetting.

Electrowetting looks like the e-Ink technology. They both work without backlightning and have low energy consumption. E-Ink technology is fully implemented now for ereaders in the meantime. Electrowetting will change the reader from reading to entertaining and yield a complete new range of interactive colour devices for consumers. Now ereaders based on the principle of e-Ink technology are used as text iPods in black and white and audio iPods. Devices based on electrowetting will become content devices, offering ebooks and epapers in colour, audio, but also high-fidelity video as well as internet. The greatest advantage will be the low energy consumption.

Electrowetting is now shown as a laboratory development, which will be in operation by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. The production is rather simple as 90 percent of the existing LCD production equipment and processes are being used.

Plastic Logic Unveils QUE E-book Reader. At CES the digital paper manufacturer Plastic Logic on Thursday introduced its QUE e-book reader device, which features a 10.7-inch touch-screen display, is about one-third of an inch thick, and will sell for $649 (4GB + Wi-Fi) and $799 (8GB + Wi-Fi + AT&T 3G). Pre-orders for the device are now available from the QUE Store and will ship in mid-April. Later this year, the QUE will also go on sale at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide, and from the bookseller's website.

Samsung Ebook Readers with Stylus Pen. On Thursday at CES Samsung debuted its first two e-book reader devices, the $399 E6, which features a six-inch screen, and the $699 E10, which sports a ten-inch screen. Both devices feature non-back-lit displays, which come with a built-in electromagnetic resonance stylus pen that can be used to write annotations or create to-do lists directly on the device's screen. The devices, set to ship in early 2010, will also feature Wi-Fi capability and Bluetooth, which allows sharing of certain content with other devices.

Plastic Logic and Samsung are creating a new top of the range. Kindle DX and iRex Digital Reader 1000 series were already leading the pack, but they will now get company of Plastic Logic and Samsung. They will be sitting together uneasily as the prices are same range and a choice of preference will made on facilities and services such as news online and telephone services.

While this ‘traditional’ fight will go on in the market place for the year to come, Electrowetting will get introduced by the beginning of next year with colourful devices and have competition awaiting from Apple, from new LCD manufacturers like Pixel Qi and to a less extent from HP, Asus and others. And these new players will not just be in the market for flogging books and newspapers. They will do text, audio and video on the content container. And a complete new game with ebooks, epapers, emagazines, music and video will start.

Blog Posting Number: 1416

Tags: ebook, ereader

BPN 1352 A changing e-reader world (1)

Something is changing in the e-reader scene. Plastic Logic e-book reader has now 3G. And even more newsworthy is the acquisition of E-Ink by PVI. What is going on in this world?

The news of Plastic Logic is not really breaking news. But after Kindle and the iLiad using 3G, it will mean that the business e-readers are going to compete on a plain level. The question will be of course whether Plastic Logic will make a special deal with a telecom provider like Kindle did with Sprint. The deal with Sprint has limited Kindle geographically to the States. Whether Plastic Logic will make an exclusive bundled deal with a telecom operator is not known. With such a deal you win some customers, but also loose some. It is like with the iPhone and T-Telecom. They have a worldwide deal for a half year exclusivity. And of course they sell the iPhone to Apple tifosi, but not to other people who do not like T-Telecom (yes T-Telecom there are people who do not like the bundled deals; it means no competition).

But the fact that Plastic Logis is going to have 3G, means that there will be competition in the market. iLiad was the first one with a telecom facility, followed by Kindle. Then iRex Technologies came back with the iRex 1000 series, of which the model 1000SW is equipped with a large screen and wireless. The Kindle is equipped with 3G and now Plastic Logic will be part of the competition with a large screen and 3G. So mark 2010 for the launch of Plastic Logic.

Really breaking news is the agreement of Prime View International (PVI) to acquire E Ink. PVI is a Taiwanees leading small and medium display provider and the world’s highest volume supplier of ePaper display modules. The production company is acquiring the laboratory company of digital paper. So research and production will now be in the hand of PVI.

I am wondering whether this is smart. In the first place the acquisition sum of 215 million US dollar is not impressive for an innovative company and certainly not for a market which will grow to over 20 million e-readers units by 2012. Secondly, PVI has now the research facility and the e-reader production facility in one hand, which will hinder the diversification of the product development. PVI and E-Ink worked already close for some years. PVI acquired the ePaper business of Philips Electronics and partnered with E Ink to provide displays for electronic books including the SONY Reader and the Amazon Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.

Yet in the past twelve months E-Ink customers have announced many exciting digital paper devices. Oprah Winfrey endorsed Amazon’s Kindle on live television calling it “her favorite gadget”. Subsequently Amazon’s Kindle 2 has proven highly popular and the Kindle DX enters the eTextbook and eNewspaper space with a large 9.7” screen. SONY launched a new PRS-700 Reader with integrated touch screen. Chinese astronauts brought the Hanwan N510 eBook into outer space on a recent Shenzhou 7 mission. PVI, Epson, LG Display, PolymerVision, Hewlett-Packard and Plastic Logic demonstrated flexible active matrix displays using E Ink Vizplex imaging film. E Ink Corporation teamed with Esquire Magazine and Ford Corporation on the first ePaper animated magazine cover. In May 2009, Verizon announced the Samsung Alias 2 cellphone, with a changeable keypad made with E Ink Vizplex imaging film.

Blog Posting Number: 1352

Tags: e-reader

Digital paper seminar in Paris

Last night upon my return from Salzburg (the flight was okay; thank you) and before my flight to Tampere (Finland tomorrow, I found a message, in French, in my mailbox from Bruno Rives of Tebaldo. In the mail he announced the seventh edition of the Tebaldo Round table this time on Electronic Paper for communications, strategies and risks, to be held in Paris on 26 October, 2007.

This sounds interesting. After the introduction of two e-reader versions for the French financial newspaper Les Echos, it is interesting to see that a seminar with a wider scope than only Les Echos is devoted to the subject. During the seminar a presentation will be given about the place of the novel on an e-reader by an editor of the publishing house Flammarion. Bruno Rives himself will present the State of art and take the case of Les Echos to talk about economic models. Another speaker will talk about the place of the e-readers for the press projects and editors. A representative of Ganaxa will talk about the announced project in Japan and China. There will also be an introduction to the architectures, preparation and continuous production.

There will be more presentations on the use and experimentations in this field for the press, editors and libraries. There will be a presentation of the GeR2 e-reader of Ganaxa, digital paper as a large sheet, the development of digital paper and colours and the flexible digital paper from Samsung, Polymer Vision, Fujitsu and E-Ink.

It really looks like a very interesting seminar. But it is in France (I will have to travel again), it is in French (read French, but speak a little tourist French) and it will take two days of travelling. Yet I am very tempted to go.

For more information and the registration form:
http://www.tebaldo.com/seminaires.htm

Blog Posting Number: 882

Tags: digital paper, electronic book, e-readerdigital paper, electronic book, e-book, e-reader

Les Echos first with proposal commercial digital paper daily

Les Echos, the French sister publication of the Financial Times of the Pearson company, has launched its daily on two e-readers officially. The newspaper had been advertising the service and promoting the e-readers for some months now. Les Echos claims to be the first commercial daily worldwide with this service.

Les Echos has chosen to offer two e-readers: STAReBOOK and the iLiad. Both products are based on the E-Ink digital paper technology. STAReBOOK is developed in China and the iLiad has been developed by iRex Technologies, a spin-out of Philips in the Netherlands. The difference between the two digital paper readers is that the iLiad has a Wi-Fi facility on board and STAReBOOK does not.

Les Echos has had a pdf internet service for a long time. It is now adding the e-reader service. It has experimented with 200 units in the past months and developing its own presentation software. A movie with French, English and Chinese (!) spoken text shows the newspaper as it works on the iLiad. First thing you will notice is the screen is great, but that the e-reader has a long start-up time and the long download time.

Les echos has a video showing how Les Echos has solved the interface to the e-paper differently from the experimental interface of the Belgian financial daily De Tijd. The e-paper of Les Echos is not the WSYWIG lay-out of the printed newspaper. The first screen is a series of headlines and short leads of the frontpage stories, while next to this column the editorial commentary is and a graph of the stock exchange. One can go also to the menu and make a choice of stories and categories and a company can be found in the company register. The interface of Les Echos is different from the experimental interface done by De Tijd in Belgium. That newspaper had a WYSIWIG lay-out of the printed news, which meant that the reader would scan the pages. Once an article was seen, the reader could tick on it with the stylus and call the article up for presentation in legible form.

The subscription to Les Echos also comprises a news stories’ stream by the French news agency AFP. AFP has a separate starting point from Les Echos. The offers for STAReBOOK and iRex also contain electronic books from two French book publishers. STAReBOOK has access to e-books from Flammarion, while the iLiad subscriber has access to the books of Nathan.

The business model of the e-readers is similar to the newspaper. You pay an annual subscription to receive the news (not the newspaper) electronically. The present offers include an e-reader: 649 euro for the STAReBook plus 1 year subscription and 749 euro for the iLiad. Given the fact that the iLiad costs 649 euro without any subscription, Les Echos is prepared to market the e-reader for iRex Technologies, as an e paper subscription normally costs 365 euro. Most like the e-reader manufacturers and the e-paper publisher have split the costs. In the second year the reader will pay 365 euro as they would do for the pdf edition.

Blog Posting Number: 867

Tags: newspapers, digital paper