The pace of announcements surrounding next generation e-book readers and competition for Amazon’s Kindle family of devices is quickening.
Earlier this week Barnes & Noble announced that it was opening an online e-book store with 700,000 titles and had struck a strategic partnership with Britain’s Plastic Logic which is planning to launch a new reader aimed at the business market next year. (The Financial Times has also announced a partnership with Plastic Logic.)
Now AT&T has revealed that its 3G US mobile network will provide the wireless connectivity for the device which will also be WiFi-enabled.
Plastic Logic, founded by a group of researchers from Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, has been showing prototypes of its device which is about the size of an 8.5 x 11 inch pad of paper, less than a ¼ inch thick and weighs less than many print magazines.
The innovative eReader features the largest screen in the industry and an intuitive touch screen user interface and is designed to be relatively flexible and rugged unlike most of the e-book readers currently on the market.
It is likely to compete directly with Amazon’s wireless-enabled Kindle readers which use Sprint’s WhisperNet network, and future generations of Sony’s eReader which, unlike the current models, are likely to be wirelessly enabled.
AT&T involvement in the project is interesting because it reflects a growing enthusiasm within the Dallas-based telecoms giant for wirelessly-enabling consumer devices such as personal navigation systems, mobile internet devices, healthcare products and other devices.
In order to boost its position in this emerging market, it also recently signed a multi-year partnership deal with Jasper Wireless, a technology company that has developed billing applications and other services that support mobile devices.
Coincidentally, commercial availability of the first jointly developed offering, dubbed the AT&T Control Center, which offers a number of unique features including instant activation and flexible rate plans, was also announced today.
