Late last year I wrote an article on the market for E-Readers commenting mainly on the Kindle reader from Amazon. In this I discussed the potential of these devices replicating the success of the Apple iPod and iTunes music store in converting readers of books to downloading of content instead of buying printed books. I stated that I was not that impressed with this model and unlike music the option of downloading of book content was not such an attractive business model as that for music.

In this article I also commented on other E-Readers that were an alternative to the Kindle, and in particular the forthcoming PlasticLogic Reader. I stated that I felt the business model for this reader was better than that Amazon put forward for the Kindle as it aimed at a wider market segment including business documents from Microsoft Word and PowerPoint as well as PDF documents. It also allowed users to transfer these documents from their PCs without having to use proprietary formats and without having to load them down from the Amazon store. I also preferred the Letter size format of the PlasticLogic device that allowed much easier document reading. I stated that the PlasticLogic Reader would be suited for newspapers and magazines and could open up a new market for educational books. These applications would require the publishers of magazines, newspapers and educational books to develop new business models to open up these markets for E-Readers.

Now I am sure that Amazon did not read my article for inspiration to develop new ideas, nor do I think that the publishers of The New York Times or Washington Post did either, but it appears that Amazon is following these ideas in its latest announcements. Last week Amazon.com made a major move to change the E-Reader market with the launch of their new Kindle DX. This appears to be a reader that largely replicates the functionality of the PlasticLogic Reader and it is aimed at three major user groups. These are for college students to replace their expensive textbooks by downloading this content into the Kindle DX. The second model is for newspaper and magazine readers, and the third model is for corporate consumers. The new Kindle has a larger 9.7inch diameter screen to allow much better reading of the formats of newspaper and magazines. This however is still smaller than the PlasticLogic Reader screen.