Asus E-book Reader brings Dual Touchscreen Display

You perhaps already know that Asus is planning to venture into e-Book reader market with a duel screen e-book reader. The company showed off a prototype of its e-book reader at the CeBIT 2009 Expo in March 2009. Now, Asus is planning to release the product by the end of this year. Currently Sony and Amazon are dominating the e-book reader market and it is pretty much understandable that Asus would also face some tough challenge from Sony’s Reader Pocket Edition and Amazon’s Kindle. However, it is expected that Asus e-book reader would come up with some features which are absent in its competitors. Let us see what features Asus could pack in its dual screen e-book reader:

Screen

Asus E-book reader will come up with a dual touchscreen. Moreover, this would be the first e-book reader which will provide the users with color view. Sony and Amazon e-book readers support only black-and-white view. No doubt, it will be a big advantage of Asus e-book readers, but there is a disadvantage of it too.

As Asus e-book reader will support color display, it can not use high-definition E Ink technology which is widely used in the current e-book readers. E Ink technology does not support color display, but this technology allows the readers to read on the e-book readers in sunlight.

A mini-laptop inside an e-book reader

You can find a netbook inside e-book read. A hinged spine in the centre separates the two touchscreens, and thus, giving an impression of a traditional book. On one side of the spine, you can read book, while the other side of the spine you can use for web browsing and other basic computing. There will be a virtual keyboard in order to make you feel that you are using a netbook.

Other Features

You will find some other attractive features in Asus e-book reader. First of all, the device would come with a microphone and speakers, and thus, allowing its users to make cheap phone calls using VOIP functionality.

Price

Reports out in the media suggest that Asus e-book reader will have an advantage over current e-book readers from Sony and Amazon when it comes to price tag. Asus is planning to launch their e-book reader in two versions: premium and budget. Reports also indicate that the budget version would come with an attractive price tag of about $163 which is much cheaper than Sony Reader Pocket Edition, ranging from $200 to $300, and Kindle from Amazon which is priced at $300. The premium version will cost you a bit more; most probably in the price range of Sony’s and Amazon’s e-book readers, but it will provide you with 3G functionality, and most importantly, you can expand the storage capacity of premium version of Asus e-book.

There is no doubt, if Asus e-book reader can really offer the aforementioned features, it would be a big hit in the e-book reader market and would force its competitors to provide similar features in their upcoming versions.

There are some other electronics companies including MSI, iRex and Plastic Logic who are also planning to step into e-book reader market which has become a lucrative market lately.