We knew iRiver was prepping an e-book reader for the Japan market, but this is the first I’ve heard about an international one. The rather blank user interface of the Japanese Libre has been replaced with a QWERTY keyboard on this, the Story. It looks like a nice little piece of kit, but it doesn’t really set itself apart too much, though it does have a microphone — a nice feature for frequent annotators.
The Story has a 6-inch screen and appears to be extremely thin, maybe a quarter of an inch (specs aren’t available yet). It lacks any obvious buttons for next page, home, and that sort of thing, but the keyboard in this shots isn’t very clear so they could easily be down there. iRiver is an interesting company and frequently comes out with elegant and untried designs, though, so I wouldn’t rule out something subtle or hidden on the device.
It does have a dedicated comic book mode, I suppose for black and white comics primarily, and it’ll likely support all the popular e-book and e-publishing formats out there. iRiver’s always been good with format support. I’m sure we’ll get more official word soon — in the meantime, all we can say is hey, it looks nice.
why does everything need to set itself apart? Amazon and Sony charge a buttload for their readers, why not make an “also-ran” at a lower-cost and win some market share away?
This could be a placeholder until they are able to make some differentiators on a newer model, the initial rush is to get to market.
True to some extent. Bumblebee Tuna and Chicken of the Sea don’t differentiate from one another, really (I like Bumblebee better), yet they compete somehow.
In this case, I think they can succeed either like you say, by putting a copycat out there, or by having it designed to do one thing better or something the others don’t at all. Hard to say at the moment.
the ssd market is very similar.. most companies are looking to get something out that people would buy, then add differentiators once $$$ starts rolling in, or take the money and run (most likely).
HDD manufacturers are rolling out 1TB and 2TB drives that have the same features (generally 8-64MB of onboard RAM, 7200RPM) and same specs. It’s a combination of perceived quality of the brand and the price that drive the consumer to purchase one over the other.
As a newcomer to the market, iRiver could put in a differentiator or two to help it’s cause, but usually it comes down to familiarity with name. Hence why people still buy ipods despite some newer players having some differentiators.
That’s really awesome, but looks expensive and bulky. I really like the Kindle 2 that I got, despite people saying the case is cracking (which it isn’t for me) I got it herE: http://www.computersncs.com/rd_p?p=191614&t=9544&a=27619-skindle&gift=27619