After several months of rumor, the UK newspaper The Independent is reaffirming that Waterstone’s, the UK’s leading chain of bookstores, has supposedly signed a deal to distribute the Sony Reader in the UK via its stores, with a launch slated for this autumn. The deal has yet to be comfirmed by Sony, but if true, then this is great news for eBook fans in the UK whose only option at present is to either buy the rival Iliad device through Borders UK or import a Sony Reader or other device from the US or Europe. I have seen both the Iliad and the Sony Reader up close and actually imported a Sony PRS-505 Reader myself. I think the Sony wins hands down both in terms of design and usability.
It is also unclear yet whether the UK model will be an updated version of the PRS-505 or the same version that is currently on sale in the US. Some had speculated that in light of Sony’s aim to “connect everything” (see our article here) we would see an updated model with wireless capability similar to that of Amazon’s Kindle (the Reader’s main competitor in the US).
As always we will keep you abreast of any developments and I will be reviewing the PRS-505 in a future article.
I am also interested to hear if there are any “readers with Readers”, what do you think of the device? Leave us a comment below.
