octomber, 2010 ·
Sharp made an announcement that it will launch first E-bookstore services from December of this year based on company’s Android 2.1 based GALAPAGOS E-Book reader. The two new e-book readers come with a choice of 5.5 (mobile type) and 10.8-inch (Home type), with resolution of (1,024 x 600 pixels) and (1,366 x 800 pixels) respectively. The two models come with Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11 b/g) communication capability. The main features of the new readers are Automatic Schedule Delivery Service for periodical publications, which include newspapers and magazines. In addition to this, the new readers feature rich graphic capabilities and an easy-to-use interface. The first content line-up for the newly introduced service will encompass 30,000 newspapers, magazines and books with a price tag which is not disclosed yet by Sharp. The new e-book reader complies with XMDF format, to support Japanese expressions such as vertical writing and ruby. But Sharp will introduce new formats such as PDF in the near future. PC data, including documents and maps, can also be converted to XMDF format to be viewed on the media tablet. Through automatic schedule delivery service, the user can categorize and organize the downloaded content by their categories, including “unread/recommended”, “most recently read”, favorite, as well as “scheduled delivery”. The free trial version of e-book content will be automatically delivered from e-book store. On the downside, the new GALAPAGOS E-Book readers don’t come with 3G communication capability, but Sharp has that in its agenda for obvious reasons. Sharp also announce that in addition to its cloud based content delivery based service will introduce music, game and video delivery services through the its PC tables. The name of the GALAPAGOS comes from the famous Islands in the Pacific off South America which are owned by Ecuador. The name personifies the “evolution” of services and terminal devices. Well, this is a lot of marketing for a simple e-reader, we just have to wait and see how the content delivery system will work and what the price tag on that is. It would pose a major competition to paper based media and just in case the new device provide yet another advertising portal, it will cause yet another decrease in paper based advertisement.
