With the release of the Apple iPad, many of the “e-ink” devices have taken a hard hit with price cuts. Sony has also reduced the price of its cheapest e-reader model, the Reader Pocket Edition from US$170 to US$150. This is following a recent US$30 drop which had occurred in April as well. The Touch Edition Reader has dropped in price from US$200 to US$170 as well with the higher end 3G Daily Edition Readers seeing a drop from US$350 to only US$300. Sony has dropped prices in order to compete with other device manufacturers which have also seed a reduction in prices.

Since the Apple iPad has the ability to read e-books and other media easily, its functionality with multiple media types has placed a strain on the markets for dedicated reader devices. Sony selling their e-reader devices for higher prices ended up having to reduce their prices because competitors are doing the same to compete with the iPad. Since the e-readers are not multifunctional, their price tags seem to be heavier for simple devices intended to be used for reading books and viewing textual news on such devices.

Because of this, Sony, along with their biggest competitor the Amazon Kindle, have lowered their prices. It is interesting to see what happens to this niche, if it stays vibrant for those readers who are looking for a device that does one and only one thing (display text content) much like older versions of the iPod. This market has to become as cheap as possible and focus on the bookstores and content to make their money in my opinion.

The hope that reducing the prices will bring for e-readers is still unknown, but it will help to increase the possibility that they can compete with the iPad and other reader devices. The major drawbacks for the iPad are that it is not solely designed to read books, so it does have limited functionality and libraries which it can access whereas devices such as the Sony e-reader, Amazon Kindle and other devices have access to extended libraries of thousands of books and news sources with small subscription service fees which they are designed to work flawlessly with. The main question is whether or not the pricing will affect how well they fare against Apple iPads.

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