Slim, Large Screen E-Reader Skiff to Debut on Sprint
E-readers are likely to get hotter with the next generation of devices sporting color screens and large displays expected to launch through the year. — One of the first products to announce its arrival is the Skiff e-reader …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Skiff is the device behind Hearst's February 2009 plan for a wireless e-reader — a newspaper publisher deciding to ship its own hardware rather than rent space on someone else's. Its debut on Sprint lands two months into a market that stopped being a single-vendor story in September 2009, when Best Buy and Verizon jumped into the e-reader fray and established the carrier-plus-retail template.
Sprint's side of the deal fits its recent pattern: the carrier has been building out beyond phones all year, from the Palm Pre exclusive to opening its network to Android developers, and a slim large-screen reader extends that device pipeline. The hardware itself also closes a loop with Seiko's super-thin high-resolution E Ink prototype from 2007, which showed where large-format reader industrial design was headed.
First-order effects
- Sprint gains a flagship non-phone connected device for its network, deepening a portfolio that until now has leaned on smartphone exclusives like the Palm Pre.
- Skiff gets a national distribution channel at launch, letting Hearst's reader reach customers without relying on consumer-electronics shelf space.
Second-order effects
- Best Buy and Verizon now face a rival carrier with an exclusive large-screen reader, raising the pressure on that pair to sign or stock a comparable device of their own.
- Other publishers watching Hearst's move must decide whether to license their content to existing reader platforms or follow suit with hardware partnerships of their own.
Third-order effects
- If the expected wave of color, large-display readers materializes through 2010, e-reader distribution could consolidate around carrier bundles, mirroring how smartphones locked to networks.
- The deeper structural shift is publishers converting themselves from content suppliers into vertically integrated hardware-and-delivery businesses, a role newspapers have not held before.
The trend: E-readers are turning into carrier-exclusive hardware plays, drawing newspaper publishers and telecom operators into direct competition over device distribution.