Sony Reader PRS-505 - MobileRead's Conference Call with Sony

[civicguy]

just visited Sonystyle.com and saw the new reader there......... free shipping and engraving

[igorsk]

The manual is available in English and French, so I guess they're at least planning to expand into Canada.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Jaapjan, this question came also up and according to the Sony rep, expansion outside North America is something they are looking into, but it's currently not feasible due to the complicated licensing schemes they have with their publisher partners. In other words, and this is only my interpretation, Sony would only want to sell the Reader outside the States if they were also able to directly sell e-books along with it.

It does seem strange for a hardware-devoted company to do so. Are they really making so much money off Connect Books?

Personally, I would guess that the U.S. is one of few countries that will buy a significant number of the readers at its $300 price point, and this may have some bearing on U.S.-only sales. We're playing test market, and Sony is limiting things to the U.S. to keep things simple for them. (I base that on Sony's miniscule marketing efforts and lack of promotion, as if they want to see how the device sells by osmosis, or wait until they can interpret the buzz.)

[Trenien]

Alas, they did make a mistake.

I have a librie and my brother bought himself a prs-500. Although both have the same screen, the dark casing of the later makes it seem much lighter than that of the former.

It really is striking: you have to put them side by side to realize they're really the same. It left me wondering about about darkening the casing of my librie...

[da_jane]

I like some of the new changes but I am not sure about the design. I probably won't buy a new one but I like that Sony is investing R&D into this product.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really don't see why it's such a big deal to sell internationally, when you look at all the other eBook web sites (MobiPocket, Fictionwise, etc) who are happy to do so!

Well, a hardware warranty for customers living outside US borders would be nice.

Originally Posted by igorsk

The manual is available in English and French, so I guess they're at least planning to expand into Canada.

Very perceptive igorsk, I hope they do especially since our Canadian dollar has reached parity with the US's.
Or maybe they want the Cajuns to buy it. That said spanish is the bigger of the US foreign languages used.


Thanks for the article NatCh!

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Jaapjan, this question came also up and according to the Sony rep, expansion outside North America is something they are looking into, but it's currently not feasible due to the complicated licensing schemes they have with their publisher partners. In other words, and this is only my interpretation, Sony would only want to sell the Reader outside the States if they were also able to directly sell e-books along with it.

Well I am sick and tired of this BS

Not sure who to blame more, Sony or publishers. Look how Applie kicked azz of music companies and created a massive ubiquitous market. Sure music companies are complaining but they are still making a lot of money.

I would like to purchase 505, but in light of these restrictions and unknown future outside of US, I'll just go with Bookeen. I have plenty of tecnical manuals and documentation in PDF format. For others the paperback format is not much more expensive than eBook version and as compact as eReaders. As pointed out before, we are not really saving that much money from eBooks vs pBooks.

Seems to me the biggest looser here is Sony itself, which is pity as they did a fairly good job thus far. They are keeping the door wide open for Bookeen and other competitors by excluding non-US markets. Guess what happens tomorrow when subprime crisis, followed by oil crisis and trade deficit crisis pushes US into recession. When americans are loosing their houses the last thing they'll be shopping for is 505. Sony is really shooting itself in the foot here by not diversifying their market to non-US.

Rant done

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by igorsk

The manual is available in English and French, so I guess they're at least planning to expand into Canada.

I just searched the Sony Canada site. No PRD products found.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

It does seem strange for a hardware-devoted company to do so. Are they really making so much money off Connect Books?

Personally, I would guess that the U.S. is one of few countries that will buy a significant number of the readers at its $300 price point, and this may have some bearing on U.S.-only sales. We're playing test market, and Sony is limiting things to the U.S. to keep things simple for them. (I base that on Sony's miniscule marketing efforts and lack of promotion, as if they want to see how the device sells by osmosis, or wait until they can interpret the buzz.)

Really??? Canadians are avid readers. If we can afford to pay thousands of dollars for stupid TVs then why would $300 be a problem???? I don't see the complexity in packaging a PRS box and shipping it elsewhere. I bought and got support from other US firms like iRobot, all using web and shipping items to/from US. No problems. This device is so small, shipping costs would be minimal.

While they don't market it outside of US, why would they prohibit sales outside? No, it has to do with publishers and whatever restrictions were imposed on them by the publishers. Sony needs some ballz like Apple to force them to properly develop their electronic offerings. I can purchase just about any paper book here published in US. It is the eBook stigma, or whatever ....

[vivaldirules]

Many warm thanks to you for your efforts, NatCh, Bob, and Alex.

In Sony's video of the 505 two things struck me compared to the 500: its thinness and the clarity of its screen. As someone who has seen and touched both, would you say the 500 is too light (i.e., does it feel cheap or uncomfortably "dropable") or comfortably lighter but solid? Is the screen display really superior or am I just overly optimistic? I'd love to see side-by-side images of the same ebook displayed on both devices.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by bob_ninja

Really??? Canadians are avid readers. If we can afford to pay thousands of dollars for stupid TVs then why would $300 be a problem???? I don't see the complexity in packaging a PRS box and shipping it elsewhere. I bought and got support from other US firms like iRobot, all using web and shipping items to/from US. No problems. This device is so small, shipping costs would be minimal.

While they don't market it outside of US, why would they prohibit sales outside? No, it has to do with publishers and whatever restrictions were imposed on them by the publishers. Sony needs some ballz like Apple to force them to properly develop their electronic offerings. I can purchase just about any paper book here published in US. It is the eBook stigma, or whatever ....

The first hurdle I'd see for distribution in Canada is rights for French books. They're not the same.

[Xenophon]

Also, for those with a lot of books, it scans the list and presents an alphabetical list of books in chunks, i.e. A-C, D-F, and so on. These categories are then directly available with the number keys, which will speed jumping through the book listings considerably.

Did they say whether it does this for more than one level? If so, my wishes are answered... () ...and I may have to consider how much I want a new reader. Also, did they say anything about how many of these new features will appear on the older model? This one, in particular, shouldn't be any problem.

What you didn't see, is that we now have word that the 505 will support Collections on memory cards! How often have we longed for that?

WooHoo!
Of course, this is another thing I'd LOVE to see on the 500 too.

Xenophon

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

With all the speculation going on around here, I bet it was tough to keep that under your hat!

Not as much as you'd think -- the call was yesterday afternoon, so we only had to keep quiet about it for about nine hours -- not like last year when it was a bit over a full week. Anyway, that just about gave us time to write it up.

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

I do know that publisher support for the Sony hasn't flagged one bit, and that many houses are now feverishly trying to lock down e-rights for their back catalogs. I'm expecting a huge upswing in content availability in general, not just Sony-specific, over the next few months.

These are exciting times for the e-book industry.

Exciting times, indeed, Jason, thanks for sharing that tidbit, it's very interesting thrown on the pile.

Originally Posted by Trenien

I have a librie and my brother bought himself a prs-500. Although both have the same screen, the dark casing of the later makes it seem much lighter than that of the former.

It really is striking: you have to put them side by side to realize they're really the same. It left me wondering about about darkening the casing of my librie...

Thats good to know, Trenien, it's a reason to consider staying with the dark blue version of the 505, rather than the silver.

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

In Sony's video of the 505 two things struck me compared to the 500: its thinness and the clarity of its screen. As someone who has seen and touched both, would you say the 500 is too light (i.e., does it feel cheap or uncomfortably "dropable") or comfortably lighter but solid? Is the screen display really superior or am I just overly optimistic? I'd love to see side-by-side images of the same ebook displayed on both devices.

We haven't touched both yet -- this was conference call.

The 500 has a very nice heft to it (it's just over half a pound) and the new one is supposed to weigh about the same. The metal casing on the 500 makes it seem very robust (and several stories around here support that), I'd expect the new one to be similar, though I can't wait to actually, as you put it: see and touch the new one.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Did they say whether it does this for more than one level? If so, my wishes are answered... () ...and I may have to consider how much I want a new reader. Also, did they say anything about how many of these new features will appear on the older model? This one, in particular, shouldn't be any problem.

They didn't say if the sorted menus were multi-level or not ... I'd guess they're probably just the two levels, but that is a guess -- we won't know until someone looks for themselves and tells us.



Regarding the extra-U.S. bit, I apologize for not mentioning it in the main write up -- we were trying to get the article done in time to release it at the first possible second, and it just plain slipped my mind, along with several other details that will come up shortly, I'm sure.

[Arek_W]

Like with all products in EU vs US, US products are dirt cheap vs EU equivalents in euro, especially with today exchange rates. I simply do not comprehend this marketing approach taking into account that they would sell it here at 300euro per unit making a premium over US market.
So maybe it really has to do something with book licensing?? Still I think this whole reasoning stinks & reminds me off their BETA video license approach. I would love to have a bit of near my house support from SONY It is a pain to go through the US INS for shopping every time

[nesagwa]

It is kind of disappointing that they probably wont be doing any more firmware updates for the 500. Im sure most of us that just got a reader wont want to go drop another 300 dollars for a new one with minimal upgrades.

I really wish Sony would release an update that fixes the Date problem and adding in some of the new book sorting methods.