The e-book reader market has awakened thanks to the efforts of companies such as Amazon and Sony. Now more companies are entering the market to get a piece of the pie. Samsung is another one of those companies that is trying to find its way in this market. The company has introduced another reader in Samsung E60 that enables its users to take notes on the go and use their device as some sort of a basic tablet. The device won’t have a 3G service to rely on at this point, but it does provide support for WiFi.

Credit Engadget

Move over Plastic Logic and Sony. ASUS has other plans for the e-book market. ASUS has already had a big hand in turning the netbook market to what it is currently. But why just settle on netbooks when you can also play a role in e-book reader market as well. The Eee brand contains innovative laptops and desktop PCs. And ASUS has big plans for Eee reader. For starters, it’s a dual screen device that lets you read e-books and do much more while you are on the road. You can use one screen to read your book, while the other can serve a virtual keyboard or an Internet browser. So you can potentially tweet and read your book at the same time.

ASUS also promises us a color screen reader, so we are finally going to get an e-book reader that is capable of displaying college text books in color. The device will also include a webcam, a microphone, and speakers (is Amazon listening?). So essentially, the ASUS Eee reader is a mini-laptop/ebook-reader hybrid. Now how much would a device like Eee reader cost? If you are looking at Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, you would probably guess somewhere in the high $800s. But ASUS is planning on releasing two models, the first of which will cost less than Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.

Since nobody has really tested the final version of this device, it’s hard to tell how it would work. But it certainly has a huge potential. ASUS is known for manufacturing high quality gadgets, so you know you are getting a decent device when you get an Eee device. How ASUS addresses the content issue for its e-book reader is not known yet.

Your take: does ASUS Eee e-book reader have a chance?

It’s not everyday that you hear about a hot gadget that is more popular among the older generation (40+). But Amazon Kindle seems to have achieved that feat. Crave has a piece on a survey that was done among Kindle owners, clearly showing that Amazon Kindle is very popular among folks 40 and above.

As you can see from the above numbers, a whole lot of Kindle users are in the 40-70 age range. That should be very encouraging for Amazon. For starters, the older folks are usually more resistant towards new technologies. Kindle is no ordinary gadget. It provides you with a significant bang for your buck. I got a lot of flak when I wrote a post on how Kindle is a superior gadget to iPhone. The above numbers somewhat prove my point. Kindle is so easy to use that even 70-year-olds are giving it a try. Unlike many other gadgets, Amazon Kindle can provide value to folks from all walks of life. That is why it has been so successful in the past couple of years.

Amazon has a great opportunity here to take Kindle to the next level by targeting the young generation. It has already managed to get the older folks to adopt the Kindle. Getting the young folks to give Kindle a try shouldn’t be that hard if Amazon reaches out to the communities (teachers, colleges, and libraries) around the nation. Kindle not only makes it easy to carry a lot of books, it saves you a lot of money too. Amazon just needs to do a better job getting the word out and provide people with incentives to buy the Kindle. The sky’s the limit here.

Your take: how can Amazon get teenagers to adopt the Kindle?

In the past couple 6 months, we have heard so many times how Kindle doesn’t support PDF ebooks and as such it’s useless. Now I have explained a few times here and there on this blog that Kindle is actually able to read your PDF books but of course you need to convert it to Amazon’s format (which can be done for free). So why am I talking about this issue again? Because it’s astounding that after almost a year that Kindle has been out, people are still claiming that the Sony Reader is comparable with the Amazon Kindle. You know, I wished I worked for Amazon and got paid for defending their product, but comparing Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle is like comparing Apples and Oranges at this point. A device that has no internet connection its own cannot be compared to a device that comes with lifetime internet connection. I don’t doubt that Sony Reader is well-designed, and it’s great that it supports PDF files. But in my experience, 95% of PDF books can be converted to the Amazon format. Besides, with the conversion service that Amazon provides, you can convert your ebooks to the Kindle format for free or as low as .10 a book (includes wireless delivery). Sony Reader may support PDF and have a slightly better design but that’s pretty much all that is going for it. So I would stick with my Kindle for now.