Q&A: How Asus plans to topple the Kindle

 

Gallery

By Stuart Turton in Hannover

Posted on 3 Mar 2010 at 10:16

In a market flooded with eBook readers, it can be a little difficult to get excited by a new one. However, Asus is hoping to make a splash with its 9in touchscreen DR-950 reader, which is being displayed for the first time at CeBIT.

We spoke with the head of the development team on the show floor, to find out how Asus hopes to topple rivals such as Amazon and Sony.

Q Why should we be excited by the DR-950?

A Lots of reasons. There's Wi-Fi and 3G, and a capacitive touchscreen, just like the iPhone. That experience is really unique on eBook readers. The Sony has a resistive touchscreen, and you need a stylus, which you can lose. We have a text-to-speech feature that's better than the Kindle. It's Svox and supports 26 languages; it's the same technology used by Porsche and Jaguar, and sounds really nice.

Q Amazon got into a lot of trouble with publishers because of its text-to-speech feature. Are you not worried about facing the same backlash?

A It's something we're thinking about, but we can't talk about anything. It's still not launched.

We don't know how customers will react to the iPad, or how Amazon will react. They might drop their prices, or doing something else. It's going to change the market just by being there

Q Does that mean there's a lot of work left to do?

A We weren't even sure whether to show it, at first. It's still in development and we didn't want people coming here, trying it and not enjoying the experience. In the end, we decided that's it worth showing people, so they know what we're trying to do.

Q What work still needs doing?

A There's still some bad spelling on the menus, and we still think the response time is a little slow. We're working on that, we'd like it to be faster. People don't seem to mind, though.

Q The DR-950 features a web browser. Is that going to be a good experience, given how slowly E Ink screens refresh?

A I had this conversation with the product manager. There's no Flash support, or other things. I asked 'shouldn't we just focus on the reading experience?', but these are nice things for customers to have, and use if they want. It's a choice.

Q How do you see DR-950 developing?

A We'll have colour screens next year, and we're looking at LCD screens, but that's just a conversation, we haven't made any decisions on that.

Q Has the iPad effected your plans?

A We don't know how customers will react to that, or how Amazon will react. They might drop their prices, or doing something else. It's going to change the market just by being there. The iPad isn't designed for the pocket, or for reading. It will hurt your eyes. An eBook reader is designed for this.