Screen test

Since it was unveiled in 2007 Amazons Kindle has dominated the fledgling market for devices that let users download and read electronic books.

Since it was unveiled in 2007 Amazons Kindle has dominated the fledgling market for devices that let users download and read electronic books. Now it faces a formidable challenge. On August 25th Sony unveiled a new,expensive electronic-book reader for the American market that will compete with Amazons offerings. Both firms are betting that demand for devices dedicated to displaying electronic text will grow explosively. They could be disappointed.

Although Sony has sold e-book readers in America for several years,the Japanese firm allowed Amazon to gain the upper hand with the Kindle,which offers users the novel ability to download books wirelessly from Amazons online store. Now Sony is trying to reassert its technological supremacy with its new device,dubbed the Daily Edition,which will be available in December for a hefty 399. This boasts not only a wireless link,but also a touchscreen interface that is much slicker than the Kindles clunky buttons.

Yet Amazon still retains one big advantage: its vast online book emporium. To level the playing field,Sony has struck a deal with Google that gives users free access to more than a million books scanned by the internet firm. It has also embraced an open electronic standard that lets customers buying e-books from Sony read them on other devices running the software. And it has inked deals with public libraries so users can borrow electronic books that disappear automatically when the loan period expires.

Amazon and Sony are not the only ones pushing digital books. Last month Barnes amp; Noble,a bookstore chain,unveiled an e-store with over 700,000 titles. Forrester,a research firm,reckons such activity will help boost sales of electronic readers from 3m units this year to 13m by 2013.

Yet there are already signs that consumers may prefer to read e-books on devices that do other things as well. According to some estimates,more people use Apples iPhone to read digital texts than use the Kindle. And Apple is hard at work developing a multimedia tablet that will probably act as an e-book reader too. Gizmos such as these are the likeliest heroes of the next chapter of electronic bookselling.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009