More exciting than many of the products announced at the Consumer Electronics Show were those that revealed what the sector’s heavyweights will offer in the future.
The features in the new Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android-powered Motorola (NYSE:MMI) Xoom tablet, for example, give a good indication of not just how those companies plan to compete with Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad, but what features the iPad 2 will likely need to keep its competitive edge.
CES product unveilings in the e-reader market — the big brother to the emerging tablet market — provided more hints as to how Amazon and other e-reader makers will stay competitive in the coming year. The keys, it seems, are color and size.
China-based technology manufacturer Hanvon’s E-Ink Panel 9.7-inch e-reader showed off not just an impressively large screen size, but a screen resolution to boot. It has a 1200 X 1600 screen resolution, handily outdoing the screen resolution of Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s (NYSE:BKS) Nook e-readers and putting it on par with some LCD screen-based tablets.
Plus, it supports that most coveted of e-reader segments — the color book. According to technology blog Engadget, the electronic ink display on Hanvon’s handheld doesn’t have the vibrant color seen on an iPad, but the muted colors do allow for the picture book and color magazine support absent from Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s devices.
The E-Ink Panel is expected to be released in China in May for the equivalent of $500, a price point that should render it moot in the broader U.S. e-reader market when it releases here later in 2011. But the electronic ink technology in Hanvon’s device is a strong indicator of what consumers are likely to see in the inevitable next-generation Kindle and Nook e-readers that come out this year.
Amazon’s latest Kindle came out this past August, at a time when Amazon desperately needed to reassert itself in the face of the iPad’s mounting popularity. As such, the new hardware was designed to drive price down and emphasize the Kindle’s specific function as an electronic book, not a multi-purpose portable media device.
The next Kindle will likely be announced at the beginning of the second quarter to capitalize on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. That device will likely feature a similar electronic ink display to Hanvon’s, providing color image support that improves on the current Kindle’s black-and-white display but won’t be as advanced as a full tablet PCs LCD screen.
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble will be able to hold off a little longer. It just released a color e-reader in November with the Nook Color, a device that proved popular enough to drive the company’s best holiday sales in over a decade. It’s more likely that Barnes & Noble will release a second-generation Nook Color in late 2011 with a larger screen comparable to the E-Ink Panel’s 9.7-inch screen.
Barnes & Noble and Amazon both have a complex challenge ahead of them in skirting the line between affordability and the need to improve their e-reader technology. Hanvon’s device joins a number of other e-readers that point to how those heavy hitters will stay competitive in their own market without taking on tablet PC manufacturers directly.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
