Jade Connections is starting to evaluate E-Book reader products. These are products similar in nature with the Kindle (Amazon.COM) sold in the USA and other similar devices.

We have received several inquiries about these devices in the past few months. The newer products being locally produced show a lot of promise, and are much better in terms of quality and features from the devices we evaluated a year ago. However, there does appear to be a feature lag with the Kindle like products, especially in the area of integration with existing digital book distribution sites such as Amazon. Some recent trade press writings also question if we are going to see a convergence with E-Book products and the Netbook / UMPC products. The reasoning is that retail pricing is not significantly different between the two, and the UMPC offerings are much more versatile devices. On the other hand, the UMPC products still have a form factor and weight several times that of the UMPC products.

Timing has not been set for formal introduction of these products. We will continue our talks with several factories and representatives working in this area during our preliminary sourcing investigations. If you have a need for these types of devices, please let us know!