Sony is seeing “huge interest” from schools in its eReader electronic book reader, according to Stan Glasgow, the president and COO of Sony Electronics, the unit which sells all of the company’s non-Playstation electronics products in the US.
It’s a further sign that the education market might be a bigger early player in the ebook market development than the wider consumer market although textbook suppliers are nervous about just how the move to ebooks will affect their traditional business.
The education market is one of the best opportunities for New Zealand’s publishers to take a lead in the digital publications space. It’s the largest sector of the multimillion dollar export market for New Zealand books and a key driver behind the recent initiative by the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand to promote the formation of the New Zealand Digital Book Centre. The Centre would provide early technology, skills and business development opportunities for New Zealand’s local publishing industry to enable it to compete in the international market earlier than it otherwise could.
In the same recent talk to financial analysts, Glasgow also claims that sales of Sony’s eReader have picked up since Amazon introduced its Kindle ebook reader late last year. He also confirmed that Sony is working on adding cellular networking capability for the download of new ebooks, one of the Kindle’s popular features.