Sunday, October 7, 2007

PDF on tracks, design slight modifications and release date

We have recently released the 0.98 version of the firmware. As announced previously, in this version we do support PDF format with some features as fit width, fit page, fit height and rotate 0°, 90°, 180°,270°.

The software will be ready on time and as already said the supported formats will be for this first release: Mobipocket (encrypted and unencrypted), HTML, PalmDoc, Txt and PDF. RTF and other formats supports will come on further firmware releases. The firmware update will of course be possible for every Cybook Gen3 possessor.
The Cybook final design has been slightly modified, the surface treatment is not glossy anymore but keeps its softtouch. The navigation button has also been modified to be easier to press on.

Concerning our release date, the Cybook Gen3 will be definetly available before end of october. We will send very soon an official release date via our newsletter (subscribe at http://www.bookeen.com/) and this blog. At this occasion we will also announce the opening of Cybook Gen3 pre-sales on our website.

Concerning the price we confirm a $350 for US territory and 350 Euros for Europe.

46 comments:

vm said...

good news

IceHand said...

Sounds great, I especially like that the Cybook won't be glossy.

What about folder support? Will that be availabe on release or added later?

user512 said...

350 $ = 247.278 €

100 € more expensive!!!!

Unknown said...

I agree with user512, 100€ which is near 140$ is a bit too much of a difference.
Can Europeans pay in dollars? :D

Seriously, the only major advantage for the Cybook in Europe is the lack of competition. In the US it already has serious competition with the new PRS505, perhaps when we get some choices around here we will also get a fair dollar vs euro exchange rate.

Unknown said...

shame on you for the EU-pricing

No. 1 said...
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No. 1 said...

I was quite curious and interesting in your device, but here, I think you've made a mistake :

350 Euros for Europe and 350$ for the US: It can't be the VAT !!

Everyone will think twice before buying the Cybook when they see the Sony prs505 with 210Euros (250 Euros in Europe maybe for the shipping cost)

Nick Bria said...

Please tel us how you justify such a price difference. You are a European Company selling a product you are manufacturing......I think you should get back to the board room and correct this before it damages you!

Unknown said...

I seriously don't understand why everybody is complaining.
€350 it's not at all that expensive.

Once you consider french VAT, there is only a €47 difference, but in europe we get a 2 year warranty vs. 1 year abroad.

Try to buy an ebook reader from the competition, it might sound cheap in the beginning but I bet you won't get it delivered in europe for less than €300. And that is with no warranty at all.

Anonymous said...

3 questions for you:

- will fit-width | fit-height attempt to crop the margins of a PDF to focus in on the main content?

- will you be shipping to Canada for $350 US? how much can we expect to pay for shipping?

thanks, nathan.

vm said...

I have question. Will Cybook support 4 or 8 shades of grey? E-ink says, that vizplex supports 8 grayscale levels.

not_all_European_are_rich said...

are european stupids? (I'm Spanish)or are they the richest people of the world?.

I think american are richer than european, but this company thinks european are more stupid than american!!.

Sorry for my english

vm said...

I think 350 EUR is acceptable. It is new technology and Alexis is right. We will pay for EU-extended 2years warranty and VAT.

I consider waiting for 10inch display....hmm.. maybe

Unknown said...

Umhh why the price rip off for the EC? Converting to UK £, the US get it for £171, the EU £242. Even adding French vat (19%?) to the US price only comes to £203. What am I getting for the extra £39?

I don't think £240 approx is unreasonable but it really irritates me when customers in a particular region get ripped off on pricing like this..especially when the goods are actually made in our home market (EU).

Chrystal Ocean said...

Same question as Nathan's: Will you be shipping to Canada for $350 US?

In other words, will your online store i) accept Canaidan orders, ii) in U.S. dollars?

Unknown said...

Will you be selling the Cybook in Australia???

Unknown said...

Sharone said....

Will you be selling the Cybook in Australia???

Answer:

I purchased a Gen2 and they happily shipped it to Australia, os I don't think it should be a problem.
Except I want to pay in US$ not EUR as the conversion difference for the $AU is much bigger.

Andrej said...

I'm quite sad about communication. Bookeen ebook reader seems to be nice peace of hardware, but you are making bad feelings when you list one price without VAT and extended 2year warranty (USA) and another with VAT and 2yrs warranty (EU).

vm said...

Andrej...another slovak fan?.. we should create fanclub group :)

Unknown said...

Hello,

I was reading a review from the NAEB folks. They mention that in order to get through the book you can go page by page, or you can jump to a chapter.

I have some books that are poorly formatted as one large file. They have chapters, but the chapters are not encoded as separate chapters as far as the software is concerned.

Anyway, If I was advancing through these books and looking for a specific section, I would want to get through without needing to go a page at a time. As a suggestion, you might consider a menu choice of skip forward 50 pages. This could be in addition to a go to next chapter choice, or it could be enabled only for books where no chapters were found.

Thanks for the chance to provide input.

Michael

Anonymous said...

i am sure there will be an option to jump to a specific page. Even my Dinsaur "Rocket Ebook" was able to do that :P

Unknown said...

SHAME ON YOUR EU PRICING!

Please check the bloody exchange rate. Are you living in a cave??? 1 EUR is more 1.40 US dollars. Why is it much cheaper in the USA?

No, 1 year + warranty is not worth $100.

I wish companies would realize that there is a thing called currency exchange rate. Please google "exchange rate".

When will this ridiculous pricing scheme stop? When the euro will be worth $2? Or when it is worth $5? Or $100???

No. 1 said...
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No. 1 said...

There are rumors about delay for the date release about the cybook until November 2007: Mobileread.com
Could you confirm that ?

October 9, 2007 11:18 AM

Dougan said...

I think that if some people think +100 Euros is fine, you can buy me one and i'll give you 250 Euros and one year warranty extension (i'll pay your repairs from 2010 to 2011).

To Bookeen: Please warn me when it is priced 250 Euros.

Bookeen said...

Hello everyone,

I confirm that the device will be available during the 3rd or the 4th weeks of october.

The folder support is currently in discussion. If it is not available for the release, it will be available in further upgrade.

Concerning the price:
Pricing is not an easy task, especially when we ship our goods from Europe. We have to take in account the european VAT, the shipment price, the local warranty limitations, our internal cost which are in Euros, the different localization costs and the volume expectations for each country.

If we compare with standard practices in the CE industry, our pricing remains fair.
For example Apple proposes higher prices in Euro than in US dollars on their Apple store, Sony does the same with the PS3, Archos (a french company) proposes the same price in Euros and USD on their online store.

We do consider that proposing the best price is very important to develop our market and we hope that both european and worlwide sales will enable us to work in this direction.

Best regards to all of you,

Michael for Bookeen

cuJimmy said...

Wake up! – You’re losing potential customers now.
Stop hiding behind a smoke screen of lame excuses.
Your pricing policy is seen as unfair to many European customers.
Ignore them at your peril

Yuri said...

I was eagerly waiting for this device, but now I don't want to buy it. European price is shameless :-(

Btw. what about selling to non-EU countries? Will we be able to buy the device without paying VAT?

Unknown said...

I know that setting a price for the entire world is not an easy task. One must find some balance, between the expected costs and sales. This is even harder for a small company since it won't have many chances to do it right.

The price, and price difference, is even higher for the Deluxe edition. Which was the version I was expecting to buy.

The extended warranty should never be an issue, since the higher the cost of the warranty, the lower the expected product quality. Since most of us will buy this directly from you, the idea of sending back device to be fixed is troublesome.

Anyway, this high price will make some forget the Cybook entirely, for me it will force me to wait and see what December brings and then reevaluate with the choices available.

crepi22 said...

What is the speed for drawing a PDF page ? Having used a Nokia 770 tablet and its PDF reader, I know it can be quite slow on an ARM device without floating point hardware (djvu would probably be a better format). As far as I know there is no coprocessor (VFP) on a Samsung S3C2410 (may be I missed something). A video showing that you achieve reasonable performances for example on a freely avaialable technical paper (citeseer or other) would be really great!

Unknown said...

I only heard about this reader quite recently and was actually somewhat eager about it till I noticed the price differential.

As a European I would prefer to support a European company if possible. Luckily we also have the choice not to support a company who have decided that customers in Europe are saps to be taken advantage of apparently.

Count me as €350 lost to your company. Perhaps someone will make a business of selling cybooks sold in the US to customers in Europe for a more reasonable price?

At the current exchange rate $350 dollars translate to approximately €248. Even with import duty it should still be possible to make money by reselling US units on ebay to European customers. I won't be buying one now in any case though.

I'm tired of being ripped off like this by the likes of Apple, Sony and the like. Not exactly good examples to be following especially considering Apples recent problems with the Iphone pricing issue.

airforce1 said...

- if your product is good you dont need to worry about giving years of warranty.
- shipping in the eu is cheaper then shipping overseas so dont use that as an excuse.
- vat will add some expense but not 100 euros.
> it seems you are only trying to take advantage of a dominant market position, which you are likely to lose (and already lost with people said above). get fair, get 299.

Unknown said...

I guess in UK it would cost 350 pounds. Why not? Shame. Sony - here I come! ;)

Marco Pontello said...

I'm excited about the device. Just subscribed to the newsletter, and was planning to buy one as soon as I can get one.
But... the prices differences really make me think.

You cite Apple, and that's an example that I don't like too. They equalled Euro to Dollars when 1€ = 1.2$; now that the ratio as changed greatly, they keep with the same line, so no justification about VAY, shipping or other expense is anymore valid.

Don't do the same.

Bye!

Marco Pontello said...

Otherwise, I will be more than happy to pay the device in LIT. 350, off course! ;)

Unknown said...

as an austrian(€) i'am going to import a sony reader from the us. is definitely cheaper than buying the cybook (produced IN europe)...

Unknown said...

Can the cybook reflow PDF or can it only resize the text to try fit within the screen ?

crepi22 said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Yeah sure Sony did the same thing with PS3 (1€=1$) but was it a smart move? Personally I don't support companies that underestimate my intelligence. Anyway PS3 sales are nothing to brag about. Oh and one last thing.. keep it up like this and by the time gen3 comes out it will cost a bit less than a ps3 (399$)

SBeculator said...

It seems that the avalanche of angry Europeans has found its place here. With all due respect, the pricing of a product is your company policy and we - the consumers have to respect this. But please do treat us also with some respect when trying to explain the difference. Consider that your customers in general will be somewhat intelligent people, used to read books, and therefore perhaps used to think and compare.
It seems to me that you succeeded to annoy part of your potential EU customers including myself.
Well, we Europens will have to wait some more. Electronic devices always fall in price sooner or later. Maybe in the meantime some clever Chinese or Koreans will come up with some similar device and will consider us Europeans worth a fair approach.
Time will say. Wish you a lot of success.

Unknown said...

I selected Australia as a country and I got a price of 295 euro. Basically the Europe rip off price minus VAT.
295 euro are currently roughly A$ 460
while US$350 = A$ 376. This means A$83 a pure rip off.
This is absolutely incredible for a company to alienate so many customers around the world. I was convinced to buy, but when I saw this I gave up.
I would expected something this low from Sony, not from a company that is starting a new product. Shame on you!!

Unknown said...

in response to "Maxxin"'s comment "Maybe in the meantime some clever Chinese or Koreans will come up with some similar device and will consider us Europeans worth a fair approach."

There is also the jinke hanlin v3 and v8 (and soon the v9), jinke.com.cn, produced in China, and the nuut, produced in Korea.

Those of you going for the Sony or Kindle, I'd stay away from those. looks like your setting yourself up to be screwed in a single-device/single-provider locked in DRM scheme. Sony's even faced class action lawsuits for prior DRM screwups... and the amazon you even have to pay for otherwise free content like rss feeds.

I'm trying to decide between the cybook and the hanlin. The Chinese people seem to be more responsive, but this cybook seems prettier and has a nicer web page :-P.

Anonymous said...

Whahahahaha! Your pricing is really quite funny. I'm in the UK, and if you think I'm going to purchase your product for 245 Pounds, when it's only $350 (170 Pounds at the usual exchange rate).

Very silly. I'll stick to my Libre thanks.

Anonymous said...

I'm starting a new service.

Any euro people wanting to buy can let me know. I'll buy it from North America, then I'll sell it to you for 280 Euro shipping included.

Anonymous said...

Think I'll wait till the price drops by 30%.
Pity marketing folks don't understand that if you sell 10 widgets at 50 dollars (say) each you make more money than if you only sell 5 widgets at 80 dollars each.
That's because there is a natural trigger point in the price an average person is willing to pay and the cybook exceeds my threshold by about 30%.