News Corp has Plans for Ebook Reader

Posted by Jim Swanson On May - 7 - 2009 ADD COMMENTS
Last night Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and director of News Corporation) announced that News Corp has plans to distribute their newspapers in ebook format, by the end of the year.

“I can assure you, we will not be sending our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle,” he said. “We will control the prices for our content, and we will control the relationship with our customers.” This means that it’s unlikely that News Corp will be partnering with Amazon’s Kindle, much like the Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post are doing. Users are offered a discount on the $489 Kindle DX if they take out subscriptions for the newspapers.

Does that mean that News Corp will be designing their own electronic reading device? Or will they simply partner with an Amazon competitor, like Sony, iRex, or Fujitsu? Well according to Murdoch, they will likely be considering a subscription-based service on an existing portable ebook reader. The possibility still exists for them to create or rebrand their own wireless reading device, but it’s unlikely.

Finally, Murdoch touched on a possible coordinated effort with the media industry to convince Google to pay a license fee for linking to professional news content. Ha, good luck with that!

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what News Corp unveils in the following months…

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tags: | | |

Alex eReader Preview

Are you interested in a small, compact, and elegant e-reader with two integrated displays? Designed for future, this is the [...]

Asus DR-900 Preview

With the growing e-readers’ production these handheld reading devices are making a huge impression on their expanding category in the [...]

What’s the Big Deal with the Apple iPad?

Sure the iPhone and the iPod are some of the greatest gadgets ever made. But lately, people around the world [...]

Asus Eee Reader?

The cheapest portable ebook reader yet is set to arrive soon. The Asus Eee Reader has finally been confirmed for [...]

TAGS