Sharp wants e-book action

JAPANESE ELECTRONICS MAKER Sharp wants itself a slice of e-reader action to compete with Amazon's Kindle and Apple's Ipad.

According to Reuters, Sharp has the whole plan laid out - all the way from specifying the hardware to offering an e-book distribution service. Apparently Sharp has already been setting up deals with Japanese publishers, who have all but signed on the dotted line.

Sharp intends to release the hardware at some point this year. While no specifications or features were discussed, the only thing Sharp gave away was that its e-books will have video playback as well as audio.

There is already a huge pool of sharks in the nascent e-book market so we don't know how Sharp is going to pull this one off. Amazon was happily chugging along with Kindle and its own e-publishing distribution deals. Sony and the Vole were faffing about with much ado about nothing on their respective e-reader products and then camp Cupertino launched the Ipad.

Google is going to enter the fray this year and Dell is putting the finishing touches to its Mini 5. This will have a Kindle e-reader app and will focus on the Amazon service to supply content. Even Nintendo gave its recent DS XL handheld e-reader capabilities.

While Sharp can manufacture interesting display technology as it did with Nintendo's upcoming 3D handheld, we don't fancy its chances much. There are so many big consumer electronics brands already lined up, and Sharp lacks the wow factor. Maybe it had best to stick to building hardware that gets rebadged and sold by other companies. µ