InfiBeam is scheduled to launch its ebook reader, Pi (Pi – connection with us?) in the month of February and the ebook reader will be priced at Rs. 9,999/ (introductory pricing).
Shipping starts February 22nd and the booking amount currently is Rs. 999/.
Features/Specification of Ebook Reader
- 6″ E Ink (R) display
- 600×800 pixels
- Black & White 8 grayscale
- No backlight. Daylight readable.
- Internal Memory of 512MB, SD Card Slot of 4GB.
Infibeam pi ebook reader
Features
- Turn page forward/backward
- Jump to a specific page
- Progress bar to display position in the book
- Increase font size and reflow text automatically
- Add bookmark to a page
- Screen Rotate for landscape / portrait views
- Search inside a book or document
- Sort documents (Date, filename, Catalog)
- Game Play by Function Key & Navigation for Soduku [details]
An interesting development, as Amazon has launched both Kindle and Kindle DX in India (Amazon can do the ‘market creation’ for InfiBeam). If you compare features, Amazon is a much better and trusted brand, and that’s where InfiBeam will face the heat.
What’s your take on InfiBeam’s Ebook Reader? Will you buy the ebook reader or wait for others to buy and share the review?
@InfiBeam: Is this part of the negotiation strategy (‘for the big deal’)?.
Recommended Read:
I am feeling good abt the product been framed & launched from India. Waiting for NoitionInk guys now. Fingers crossed. This market is one to watch, closely.
This is uber cool, they should directly target the education market, an engineering college student already spends more than 20K in 4 years, perhaps they should just bundle a superset of books call it an engineering bundle and make it available at a fixed price of say 15 or 20K. Would require a bit of topic search ( across all books ) and cross referencing features. And it is awesome seeing a device designed in India for Indian ( and hopefully Asia-Pacific )marketplace.
This is uber cool, they should directly target the education market, an engineering college student already spends more than 20K in 4 years, perhaps they should just bundle a superset of books call it an engineering bundle and make it available at a fixed price of say 15 or 20K. Would require a bit of topic search ( across all books ) and cross referencing features. And it is awesome seeing a device designed in India for Indian ( and hopefully Asia-Pacific )marketplace. And perhaps they should make its OS open source and hackable.
Infibeam has nailed pricing of Pi at 9999 which is half the cost of kindle after import. Amazon will face very stiff competition. Infibeam Pi has the right Indian pricing and all features i need to read my book so I root for buying local Pi!
Way to go Infibeam.
Branding would be a challenge @nitin. Economical publicity through word of mouth of technocrats and early adopters should help Pi make a good headway. Otherwise there are plenty of players near our coastline too. Apart from Gray market for the brand hungry dudes.
While the pricing of device is indeed important, what about pricing of e-books? If e-books could be priced to provide cost savings of over 10k for the university students, I think that is where the killer deal would be.
Also what is the delivery mechanism for the device? Plug into PC or something like whispernet?
Abhaya
Price-wise and feature-wise this sounds like a great, if not better product than Amazon.
But what about Kindle’s USP of partnerships and integration. Amazon somehow managed to strike a partnership with Indian Operators, whereby I can access Wikipedia and the Amazon website from anywhere via the existing GPRS and CDMA Networks.
This plus the seamless integration of the Kindle with e-book shopping on Amazon may just be the moat that Amazon needs to protect itself from cheaper alternatives.
On the other hand many people will hate the Kindle for exactly THAT reason: being restricted. This sort of strategy reminds me of iPods and iTunes. This combination had an equal amount of lovers and haters, but definitely worked out in the long run.
Thoughts?
Unlike ipods and itunes where quality is a slight differenciation for apple vs cheaper alternatives, book reading on infibeam Pi should be similar to reading on amazon kindle — both use the same eink technology so no difference there.
in my opinion, cheaper pi is real innovation, i think. people may not want to pay 2x the price for access to wikipedia and amazon site from kindle. infibeam also has a good library of 1 lac ebooks from big publishers (same size when kindle launched) so dont see any big USP for amazon there…
My take on the ebook reader is here http://www.manu-j.com/blog/kindle-vs-pi/464/ I think it is a bold step and they might find some success but I doubt that the Indian market is ready for this.
Any kind of DRM on this device would be a showstopper for me.
Can I be assured that Infibeam or any publishers will not be able to revoke the book that I have purchased (like how Amazon did for ’1984′)?
Can I transfer my PDFs and documents in other formats directly to the device via USB and not by sending email to the provider?
Can I make unencrypted, device-independent backup copies of the purchased ebooks?
Am I restricted to Infibeam for firmware upgrades or can I use other providers like Rockbox?
Nobody in media seems to be asking the relevant questions to Infibeam.
cheers
nilesh
@Nilesh: They are selling epubs with DRM. There is not much infibeam can do as publishers will not agree to a non DRM product. The upside is that you are not limited to Pi as your only way of consuming the books.
It seems to be overpriced… I would rather buy a tablet
Pingback: Twitter Updates for 2010-02-02 | Upasana Taku 3D
Pingback: Twitter Updates for 2010-02-01 | Upasana Taku 3D
Ashish,
As usual Indian some selected Indian entrepreneurs just dont get it. They dont know how to innovate at all. The highly acclaimed ‘Infibeam Pi’ is NOTHING but JUST a RE-BRANDING exercise of ‘EGriver’ link : http://bit.ly/cxEGPm
I do not have anything AGAINST Infibeam, BUT they have done nothing great. They are trying to re-brand other’s product and sell it in India. I think Vishal would have never mentioned this.
It is called the ‘First Indian Ebook Reader’ ONLY if it is designed and manufactured in India.
#fail
Thanks Ashish , i contacted this Chennai based company…good rates. thanks again
20K or 10K either way its too expensive. It is obvious from the current situation that everybody will start making cheaper and cheaper readers until it gets down to say 3-5 thousand bucks. Meanwhile there’s also the Chinese guys who can sell us anything at peanuts compared to this. I have my fingers crossed for the Chinese Kindle(Chindle?)…
Ya great point! Does anyone know where we get Chinese Ebook readers in Mumbai? There are many places for chinese digital goods I hear but I dont know where.
I’d suspect Pi to be an OEM Chindle with a screenprinted Infibeam logo, sold at Indian prices. The eInk technology is a slightly expensive at the moment, but prices should definitely fall… and I do expect eBook readers in the 6-7K range by year end.
is there any pendrive option so that i can read the books i have already.