Will Kindle And Other eBook Readers Lose Out To iPad?

A recent survey by ChangeWave Research took a look at over three thousand consumers shortly after the iPad was revealed to the world. They gave special attention to the device’s function as an e-reader or its ability to snatch the sales crown from the Kindle.

A whopping 40% of those looking to bring an e-reader home in the next ninety days chose the iPad. The Kindle comes in second with 28%, Barnes & Noble’s Nook with 6%, and Sony with a miniscule 1%.

I've heard the criticisms and I love both Jeffrey Bezos and Steve Jobs - as to which product will sell better. We shall see when iPad launches next month

Sony ebook edges on Kindle

Sony ebook reader has expanded its acceptable formats trying to getting an edge on Kindle - which is quite heavily promoted on the biggest online retailer in the world. It's a rather smart move I think, since Kindle is tied to Amazon subscription and purchases, opening up the Sony ebook reader to a more varied audience will give it better coverage instead of only being limited to Sony's ebook store.

The new models coming out next month and those with upgraded firmware will be able to load

• IDPF/EPUB - this is the XML-based standard format proposed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, all the major publishers like Harper Collins, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin are offering texts in the .epub format
  
• PDF/A files - subset of the Portable Document Format that was designed for the purposes of long-term archival, with all fonts and images embedded into the document
• The device previously supported BBeB (Marlin) Books, PDF, TXT, RTF and Microsoft Word files (converted with Sony's CONNECT software).

This will make the Sony ebook reader a more flexible product