Sony had a bestseller of a Christmas with its Reader devices in the US, according to executives here at CES in Las Vegas, and Qualcomm is expecting to spice up the market with colour displays in 2010.
December sales of the Reader were four times the value of the previous year, eReaders were the biggest growth area for Sony Electronics in the run up to Christmas and had the largest unit volume of all its products, according to Steve Haber, president of its digital reading division.
Note the lack of hard numbers there. But Sony has stopped issuing figures due to Amazon’s recalcitrance. Its experience is similar to that reported by Amazon last month for the Kindle.
On Christmas Day, Mr Haber says the servers became overloaded for Sony’s Reader Store as new users unwrapped their gifts and went online to buy books.
Sony’s sales were helped by the last-minute availability of the new Daily Edition of the Reader on December 22. Mr Haber said pre-orders were fulfilled by Christmas Eve
Meanwhile, Qualcomm has emerged from stealth mode with its eReader plans and could become a major force with its screen technology later this year.
The chipmaker chose the Digital Experience product event at the Consumer Electronics Show for a coming-out party for its Mirasol display off-shoot.
Until now, Qualcomm had maintained its focus was on mobile phone and other small displays, but Mirasol seems ready for the big time.
Qualcomm showed a reference design eReader, which is expected to inspire manufacturers to come up with eReaders featuring Mirasol in the third quarter, Jim Cathey, head of Qualcomm’s display efforts, told me.
It looked impressive – the screen was colour and allowed rapid coverflows and page turns, while many of today’s eReaders are painfully slow.
Mirasol is also video-capable, with refresh rates of up to 30 frames per second, it draws very little power and is readable in bright sunlight.
It harnesses ambient light and uses micro-electro-mechanical systems (Mems) at the sub-pixel level, according to a leaflet issued at CES explaining the technology.
