Newspapers

List of e-reader newspaper projects in Asia

There’s a number of interesting e-reader experiments going on in Asia:

1. Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun teamed up with Fujitsu to experiment at a Tokyo Cafe earlier this year.

According to TechOn, customers of “Termina Kinshicho Fujiya Restaurant” could pick up one of four Fujitsu Frontech “FLEPias” (pictured here) for free between Feb 4 and 13, 2009.

Content included: “Mainichi Shogakusei Shimbun” (Mainichi Newspaper for Elementary School Students), advertisements for Fujiya Restaurant and the “Termina” shopping mall, timetables of JR (Japan Railways) trains and weather forecasts.

No word how the test went.

2. Bridgestone erected an e-paper of sorts in a bus stop. Interesting video of it posted on Digital World Tokyo in April last year. Not clear if this is an experiment or something that ran longer. There’s a few more e-readers presented here on Digital World Tokyo.

3. The intriguingly named Nuutbook (left) from Korea is produced by e-ink company Neoluxiim. Their latest product is a solar-powered e-book, arguably the most environmentally friendly way to read a newspaper: It does not cut down trees or use excess amounts of electricity.

According to Rick Kim, they have reach agreements with Chosun Daily, Maeil Economic Daily, Kookmin Daily, Munhwa Daily, Seoul Daily, Digital Times, Yonhap News Agency, and Mainichi (Japan).

Wireless subscription service is said to begin sometime this summer. Interesting that they are working with both Korean and Japanese newspapers. More (in Korean) here.

4. Recently on display at Computex in Taiwan (Text from MIS Asia):

- Netronix showed off several e-readers at the show, ranging from its EB-500 with a 5-inch screen to its EB-600 and EB-600 Cookie, both with 6-inch screens, a prototype for a new 8-inch screen e-reader and its EB-900 with a 9.7-inch screen. The company also offered its Mentor model, which also boasts a 6-inch screen but comes in a variety of colors, including yellow, pink and baby blue. The company says its Mentor e-readers can last for 8,000 page turns on one battery charge, compared to 7,500 for Sony’s PRS-505/SC. Amazon doesn’t break down its battery life into the number of page views. A contract manufacturer, Netronix is looking for big companies to order its e-readers then put their own brand on and sell them.

- Taiwan’s Unihan, a subsidiary of Asustek Computer that develops non-PC products, also displayed an e-reader with a 6-inch screen at Freescale’s office. Unihan is also a contract manufacturer, so it won’t market the device itself. It will sell the design to a customer and then make money on the manufacturing.

- Mary Lou Jepsen’s company, Pixel Qi, has released a netbook-sized 10.1-inch color screen with an e-reader setting that displays everything in black and white while conserving power, which could lead netbook developers to offer the function as an add-on later this year. The screens will be in netbooks before the holidays, Jepsen has said. She was formerly the chief technology officer at One Laptop Per Child.

5. Not an e-reader in the strictest sense, but Kanchoo is an interesting iPhone app from Hong Kong allowing newspapers to reconfigure their publications easily. (Soon to launch, apparently)

6. It is outside of Asia, but IFRA has a few interesting articles on e-readers (mainly in Europe and US).

Much thanks to Jeb Buffinton, Rick Kim, @Kankiknight and @Hedirman for the links!

Any other noteworthy projects out there?

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