Wednesday, November 26 2003
First International Computer (FIC) has received an OEM order from Matsushita Electronic Industrial for a new electronic book reader (e-book), the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer announced yesterday.
The announcement was made in a ceremony marking the launch of the new e-book, dubbed the Σbook.
Besides FIC chairman Ming J. Chien, Matsushita group president Kunio Nakamura and Masaki Akiyama and Yoshihiro Hayakawa, respectively president and e-business manager for Panasonic System Solutions Company, the subsidiary handling the new product, also attended the ceremony.
The Σbook uses a monochrome biNem (bistable nematic) LCD. Its thinness and power-saving characteristics set it apart from other e-books. It weighs only 525 grams, is about the size of a B5 book and has a thickness of only 1.1 centimeters. With two AA alkaline batteries, the Σbook can last for about two months under normal usage. It will be the first e-book to use a built-in Secure Digital (SD) card for copyright protection.
FIC will begin volume production for the order this month, with an estimated 130,000- to 150,000-unit total volume by next year, sources said. However, Panasonic estimated the Σbook, priced at about 39,800 yen, would sell 100,000 units in 2004. FIC will manufacture the whole volume.
FIC will also produce 30,000 units of a monochrome SSCT (surface stabilized cholesteric texture) LCD-based e-book for Panasonic to be sold in China next year. The price will be almost one-half that of the Σbook (about 20,000 yen), according to Hayakawa.
Panasonic has invested 7.5 billion yen in developing and marketing the Σbook. Currently, the product will be aimed at the comic book and novel markets. Later, it may be applied to educational use, newspapers and magazines, he added.
Since content for e-books costs only about 60% of traditional books, Japan’s publishing industry hopes to stimulate demand for the whole industry with new products such as e-books. The market, currently at around 2.3 trillion yen in sales per year, has begun to shrink as book circulation decreases, Hayakawa indicated.
