As Kindle and Sony focus on North America…

A worthy contender in the Digital Reader market stands poised to capture Europe. I like the article “Beyond the Kindle…” here at ReadWriteWeb.com because it illuminates something that we in North America are often encouraged to forget. There’s a whole big world out there. (And an eBook market to match.)

The article highlights a discussion with Hans Brons (I love the name) CEO at iRex, the company that was created as a spin off from the Philips research group tasked with developing the screen tech that’s in most eBook readers on the market today. They created the iRex Digital Reader 1000  (sweet machine!). Smart people though, understood their device was too expensive for the mainstream so decided to sell and develop for the business-to-business market. This is a market of interest for Kindle DX (landlocked in the US), the Plastic Logic Reader (not due on the market until 2010) and other eReader developers.

This might be difficult ground to re-take for North American eReaders if iRex can get enough publishers to adopt its platform and consolidate its growing European presence in the eBook marketplace. The other devices are going to make the attempt likely sooner than later, but how much of the market will be left for an expensive eReader from the west?

If nothing else, it should provide healthy competition that will bring all the prices down.

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