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Freescale's Cheap Chip Could Mean Sub-$99 E-Readers
eldavojohn writes "Last week, Freescale Semiconductor announced their i.MX508 chip and a few days ago released a rather bland and boring announcement that it's available. But there was at least one interesting line from that press release, 'The i.MX508 applications processor is expected to be priced at less than $10 (USD) in quantities greater than 250K units.' Yes, less than ten dollars. This sparked a wave of articles detailing how this new chip will allow the sub-$99 e-reader to emerge and according to market research, consumers are thirsty for something much more affordable than the Kindle."
I seriously doubt it's the processor that's causing the Kindle to be so high priced. It's most likely the costs of using the e-ink screens.
consumers are thirsty for something much more affordable than the Kindle.
I know I sure as hell am. The price of entry is the only thing that has stopped me from getting an eReader. I would love to not go over $100 for a good-quality eReader, but $150 would be my firm limit. I realize that e-ink screens are the primary thing driving the prices up for now, but hopefully with things like this new chip combined with new processes of putting together e-ink screens will bring the price down.
Despite how much I complain about it around here, I would be willing to pay the same if not slightly higher for ebooks as I would for dead tree books if only the eReader itself wasn't so damn expensive.
Living With a Nerd
2008 $99 laptop
2009 $99 netbook
2010 $99 ereader
Yes, the ereader will run Linux.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
I would rather assume that free *lifetime* and *world wide* wireless connectivity is what is costing Amazon money...
According to isuppli's teardown of the kindle the E Ink display is $60. The main processor (made by Freescale) is ~$8. The EPD chip, which is what becomes redundant adds only $4.31 to the BOM. The main point is you cannot expect E Ink based readers to get any cheaper any time soon. Any price cuts will only come about due to increased competition from different technologies like Pixel Qi's, or by sacrificing things like onboard wireless (which adds ~$40 to the cost of the Kindle).
Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc
I for one don't really see the for a dedicated e-reader, I know save a tree, but the fact is, sometimes I like to sit down and go low tech with a good book. Besides, I enjoy the smell of books in my library and I like to flip through the pages of a new book. I might invest in an e-reader for use on the plane, or when I go on a trip if it is attainable at say $80 on some promotion and the books are cheap, but for general use on a daily basis, I just don't see a pressing need.
Cheaper than the Kindle, and OPEN. Meet those two criteria and they'll sell by the boat-load.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
...it's got a lot of "wow" factor, but just wait for the price on the technology to drop before you buy one- eventually, the e-ink tech is going to become as ubiquitous as the flash drive. Amazon did a good job of creating a great device, but eventually there are going to be so many clones out there that locking yourself into Amazon's platform (essentilly, Amazon was copying iTunes model) at such an early start might hit your pocketbook kinda hard... Just wait for cheap-ass readers, and then the publishing industry to set up their own store(s).
This is going to be an interesting battleground, especially in the education text-book market.
How about someone just creates an e-ink display and no processor that can be hooked up to net/note book.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I agree that a lower price point is desirable but I'm still planning to wait until the page refresh process on these things is more acceptable. There is an annoying delay for every page turn, and most of the ereaders I've played with (at least 20 different models at CES this year) have a really annoying black screen in between page turns while the e-ink particles rearrange themselves. The delay and rearranging isn't so bad if you are just reading one book at a time always from start to finish, but it becomes really frustrating if you are skipping around or browsing through various documents and you want to navigate from one document to another like you might do while web browsing or working with legal briefs, etc. I would love to see e-ink technology improve to the point that one can use these things for browsing large quantities of documents -- this would be an incredible tool for researchers and educators. I'd be willing to pay current $250+ prices for one of these that was usable for such tasks, but at the moment we're still a couple years away from that.
The main reason I don't buy an eReader is a cost vs functionality. Most of the books I read, can be obtained in pdf format. So buying a computer with ability to read pdf format is more cost effective. Now if the functionality were to be increased so that I could take a pdf document and bookmark pages, scribble notes on it and such I would be happier with an eReader. There are some versions of eReaders which have this functionality, but in some cases I've heard you can lose this information. Maybe they should be thinking about eBooks being a lot cheaper or how about transitional marketing. Something where if you buy the hard copy you can obtain the electronic copy for free. Then I could better determine whether it's right for me. But then we are back to the entry level cost and the difference in cost between an eBook vs paper. Some of the books I have seen are advertised as $47 for paper and $44 for the electronic copy. So where do I come out ahead, yeah if most of my reading was fiction then it would be okay, but 90% of my reading is technical.
Amazon's desired profit margin wouldn't have a thing to do with the high cost, right?
Is my netbook (AO751h) + the yBook application (Win32 Freeware, also runs under WINE). No, it doesn't have eInk, but with a $55, 9-cell aftermarket battery, I do get ~10-12 hours without having to touch a wall wart. Plus there's a full size keyboard, and I can do just about anything else computer-wise with it that doesn't require huge video capabilities (due to Intel GMA500, which could be better, but is sufficient so far, @ ~6 months ownership). Netbook + battery = $350. More than a dedicated eReader, much cheaper than an iPad, capable of doing more than either/both, it's the best geek tool/toy that I have run across in a long time.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Right now the Que has the right idea but it is a bit pricey. If we could see an e-reader around $200 that is network capable and has the ability to send print jobs to it. You can sign me up for at least $50 units. THe possibilities of e-ink in the business environment are impressive. As an Admin I could control loose papers with a password, reduce the usage of consumables and really speed up the availibility of information. No more...where did I put that spreadsheet or flyer...Our management here is pretty sold on the Que for the legal department but definitely are concerned with the price of pushing it out to more users.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You said it. The iPod completely destroyed the market for guitar strings, and you can't find a good trombone mouthpiece here *anywhere*. Don't even get me started on how the iPhone killed the market for quality wristwatches.
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service. If the device is "open", it'll contain many more functions (free or very minimal cost) and look more like a laptop or iPad.
Right now you can download text versions of thousands of books - and Notepad is all you need to read them. If I'm going to have a special device just for reading books it's going to have to be a lot more functional and a lot less expensive than anything they're even speculating about now.
Those corporate types that think that $400 is a good price for an e-reader and books should cost $25 each are setting the stage for their extinction. That kind of pricing will create a "pirate" market for digital books; this and the low sales rate (due to the pricing) will kill their market in short order./P
It is interesting to see that the CPU supports both LCD and eInk at the same time. I've just bought a BeBook and the eInk is just perfect for reading. The eInk display is however absolutely worthless as an interface device. After buying a my Hero (android) phone, the BeBook is left at home most of the time. For my workplace I would be very interested in using an eInk display for PDF. But navigating and searching is such a PITA on the current readers that I can not recommend it to anyone. On my reader I get irritated by the navigating experience even when going from one book to another.
Idea: maybe they should mate androids and iPhones with eInk displays, e.g. using bluetooth. You could make a really cheap one while using the wireless LAN / mobile internet / multi-touch screen etc of the phone for all the stuff that the current eBooks are missing. For now I'll just use my droid, even though I will get a headache from all that eye-strain.
Paragraphs are hard.
This horse is pretty dead but I'll give it a couple more kicks. Outside of new releases, ebooks should be priced the same as paperbacks minus the costs of production and distribution associated with physical paper. Once a new title moves from hardcover to paperback, drop the "new release" premium on the ebook version.
Honestly, does any avid reader think twice about spending a couple hundred bucks on a quality bookshelf? Okay, I cheaped out on my most recent bookshelf because I had to fit a weird-size space but I do have a couple Kindle's worth of money invested in bookshelves.
Well, I just looked at the EETimes article, and I found a couple of specious claims.
Basically, they've got this chart, and they're using it to say that if the e-book reader gets below $99, the market penetration will rise to 65%.
Now, call me stupid if you want, but I took a close look at that chart, and that's not what it said. The actual figures for the $99 e-reader were:
Approx. 38% "Intend to buy in next six months"
Approx. 42% "Want to know more"
Approx. 54% "Frequent book readers with a household income of more than $75,000"
Approx. 65% "All U.S. online adults."
I don't even know what the hell that last section means, particularly seeing as its bar is smaller than some of the others in the other categories...even as a sentence fragment it doesn't make sense.
Either way, I get the feeling that the 65% market penetration might be a bit of marketing-speak, and skepticism may be called for...particularly since the source happens to be the Freescale marketing department.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
A couple years ago I bought a cheap mp3 player with a 2-1/2" screen for $69. Takes SD cards up to 2 GB. It also has a picture viewer and e-reader built in.
I have about 100 Project Gutenberg books on it right now along with a shedload of music and pictures. It can be set to auto-scroll or you can manually flip pages with the side buttons. Not a huge screen and not set up for fancy features like magazine viewing, but for books it's great. And I bought this almost THREE YEARS AGO!
Plus - the battery lasts for about 8 hours, it records, it recharges via USB and you can listen to music while you read.
With the advent of smart phones that do all of the above, is the e-reader really a practical device to make? And if so, why hasn't anyone made a Palm-pilot-sized e-reader with MP3 player, voice recorder, yadda-yadda-yadda for under $100? Or $50 for that matter.
... $100 e-meter. Thankfully there is a kind group nearby who will hook me up to theirs for a nominal fee until that comes around.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did anyone else read that as allowing the E-reader to E-merge? I think I have a case of E-fatigue, also I-fatigue come to think of it.
Sure the chip is designed for e-books, but it has some great features for general-purpose, low-power computing:
Flash support
1400x1050 display support
5xUART
256k L2 cache
This is awesome value at $10.
For a moment I was excited, I thought the article was about eepc for $99 soon not an e-reader. I personally couldn't care less about e-readers, while a nice idea I personally dont read enough print material to justify needing anything like that.
Wake me when they make a usable netbook under a 100
Ah yes, I wondered how long it would be before someone brings up the Ipad. Let's see - it's an article about getting an e-reader for under $99. What boxes does the Ipad tick for us?
* Will be cheaper than existing e-readers? [n]
* Will be an e-reader? [n]
Hmm, not doing too well there are we.
Just like every digital music player is referred to as an "iPod" because Apple has 80%-90% of the market.
That's the only market they lead. Will the Ipad be another Ipod? Or will it be another Apple TV/Air/Mac/Iphone?
The pirate market for ebooks exists already. How many of us have PDF copies of $200 text books? Not to point fingers but when I'm doing p2p it's not for the latest Britney Spears, it's for Tech Manual's and Academic Texts that would cost me a small fortune. Most of 'em are stored on servers in Europe, India, and or China...
When I look at Amazon offering a marginal price difference between hardcover and pure digital files, I start thinking absurd markup!
They used to tell us that it cost lot of money to re-print rare texts. Now all the type setting is digital and apparently if you want a digital format it costs the same as a hard copy still?
And I've got to admit, when I see fools lugging around a huge Oracle manuals or 800 page text book and thumbing the pages -I appreciate those pirated pdf's all the more. Same answer a fraction of the time and I can carry entire library on a single SD or miniSD. Not dependent on any 3G internet connection which can be costly too.
But most of our IS staff love the huge books not because they're building mental or physical muscle but more as a badge to sort of show off how much they pretend to know. Ask a question and they start thumbing what ever the latest tech bible for version "x.0.6" is, to make themselves appear savvy. Ask the same question of a programmer or analyst with pdfs the answer comes back four times as fast without the loud clunk and bible thumping on my desk... I'm just saying...
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service.
That, and the much better display, and the much longer battery life, yes.
Obviously not many electronic engineers around slashdot... The main point of the chip is that the eink display driving is direct, this will save about $5. if you don't believe me you can get the cpu that does the same for $8 and the display chip for $6.50....
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service.
At present, the main reason for dedicated readers is that eInk screens are good for that particular purpose, but are poorly suited for general-purpose computing. Even if someone releases a true open eInk reader, e.g. surfing the web on it would be so much of a pain that I doubt you'd use it much, if ever.
Form factor also matters. Both ereader and general purpose device should be convenient to hold, but with a reader, the buttons you interact with 99% of the time are flipping pages forward; everything else is secondary. So it makes sense to make at least page flipping buttons hardware, make them relatively large, and put them in a position where they can be accessed while holding the reader with one hand in a reading position. All other controls just take away valuable screen space, so should be relegated to edges of the screen, made smaller, and eliminated entirely when possible (which is why Kindle is horrible from usability POV, by the way).
By the way, most e-readers sold on the market today are not locked into the manufacturer's book service. They usually come with some support for that out of the box, like PRS and Nook, but you can perfectly well stick .txt and .pdf files on them and read those (and Calibre will convert other formats). The lock-in used to be with respect to DRM, but now that the e-book sales industry is effectively standardized on ePub + a specific DRM scheme, you can actually buy books in any random store and stick them on any reader. The only company still struggling against this is Amazon.
---
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Will the Ipad be another Ipod? Or will it be another Apple TV/Air/Mac/Iphone?
Yes but no, and no but yes - not necessarily in that order. Hope that answers your questions.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Considering that the Palm Zire cost $99 retail when it was brand spanking new, that's a pretty good question.
This would help competition not only in the ebook reader world, but in the inexpensive processor world as well, but having more than one manufacturer making 90% of the screens would be nice, too.
You're thirsty? Along with lots of other people? And only a sub-$99 e-reader will help? You need water and vitamins, or at least a salt tablet or two.
The only real justification for a dedicated e-reader device is that it can be locked to a company's book service.
Yeah! It's like the iPod! The only justification for that thing is so that you can be locked into iTunes. But everyone knows you can just plug headphones into a laptop, and then you can play back whatever you want! Idiot sheeple...
as TFA states, this is a SoC and it is the first commercialy available that incoporates one eink-certified display controller (like 8T125100A), with a CPU (ARM-cortex-A8 core) and varius peripherals specifically for e-readers. So if this is correct, it will make a difference.
This is like putting a band-aid on a decapitation. The cost of the reader is TRIVIAL compared to the cost of the books read over the device lifetime. $200 or even $300 is NOT unreasonable to pay for a high end device.
The serious problems include:
1. no ebook standard format. competing formats are a market killer, 100% of the time
2. ebook price is too F'ing high. charging $10 - $15 for an ebook that I could buy a paperback of for $6 isn't a formula you need to study too deep to find FAIL in. eBooks should cost a fraction of treebooks and they'd still turn HIGHER profits.
3. ebook collections are PITIFUL today. Find me any ebook store that has all the books of a series greater than 3 books, and I will eat those books.
The ebook industry can't seem to figure out why the public isn't embracing this format in much the same way a stalker can't figure out why his victims don't invite him to dinner.
Some one will always make a product with the functionality if you look around enough. $ is the way in which the whole market can change. That said this only looks like a $5 drop in cost.
"Something where if you buy the hard copy you can obtain the electronic copy for free."
Just dl a copy if you have the book. No one anywhere has been charged for this and it has been common practice for people dling roms of video games they own for decades. Self-enforcing stupid laws that you won't get in trouble for is silly. Being needlessly subservient.
Those figures mean nothing either way, given that most people have no experience with electronic readers and given that electronic books are currently way overpriced.
Once people realize that a $99 book reader gives people access to millions of books for the price of three hardcovers, they'll become interested. And once electronic readers are widespread, many authors will choose to sell direct for a few dollars, instead of going through publishers.
Imagine Amazon were to say at checkout: "Your shopping card costs $357; get an electronic reader and the same books for $127." What do you think many people would choose?