While There's No New Kindle Until Next Year, Sony Goes To Europe

The excitement for the next generation Kindle, fueled by lots of speculation at Wired.com, was quickly doused with some cold, wet reality from Amazon spokesman Craig Berman. Even though he didn't deny Frog Design were up to something special for the Kindle 2.0, he's quoted as saying "a new version will come out sometime next year at the earliest," in a recent interview with Dow Jones.

So, that leaves another key player in the ebook device market, Sony, some nice wiggle room in the months leading up to the holiday season. Sony has yet to make any announcements about what might be coming down the pipe, but they have just started expanding into Europe, most notably by partnering with Waterstone's, one of the UK's biggest book retailers.

From September 2008 onwards Waterstone’s will be selling the Reader itself in over 200 of their High Street bookshops. And the product is available to pre-order for September delivery now via their online store. - From Sony's Website, here.

It's very likely that this is just the tip of the iceberg for Sony's competitive march against the Kindle. Of course, E-Reads wishes them both the best of success, so we're currently prepping many more titles to be released in both Kindle format through Amazon and as Sony ebooks (and Reader compatible ePub) this fall, supplementing the over 450+ titles we have currently available at the Sony Connect eBook Store and Amazon.

- Michael