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Sony to bring e-reader

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CIOL Bureau
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Laura Isensee

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LOS ANGELES, US: Sony Corp will begin selling this month the cheapest digital book reader for the United States, heating up the competition with Amazon.com Inc in the small but fast-growing market for electronic readers.

Sony plans to start selling its 5-inch-screen Reader Pocket Edition at $199 -- which it called a breakthrough price -- and a larger touchscreen reader for $299, through nationwide retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

To drive demand, the company plans to reduce the price it now charges for downloads of best-sellers and new releases to $9.99 from $11.99, bringing prices in largely in line with Amazon's.

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Analysts say people that may have been holding off in the middle of a recession may be tempted by Sony to jump onto the digital-reader bandwagon.

"Achieving the $199 price point, we believe, expands the market dramatically," Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading division, told Reuters in an interview.

"You can throw it in your bag and always have it with you, and that also allowed us to achieve a more affordable price point."

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The news is the latest salvo in a battle between digital readers where Sony -- which was first to market -- Amazon and other companies are vying to establish themselves in a market that they expect to become a profit driver.

In July, online retailer Amazon cut the price of its standard Kindle electronic reader by 17 percent to $299. A larger version of the Kindle sells at $489.

Haber expects the market for e-readers to exceed 2 million units this year in the United States. Forrester Research estimates Kindle and the Sony Reader to hit the one million mark in U.S. sales by the end of 2008 and forecast that the market would reach two million units in 2009.

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"We're on track to exceed that forecast in 2009," said Sarah Rotman Epps, a media analyst for Forrester Research. "One of the drivers for that (future growth) is the fact that Sony is getting a product out at $199."

"We predicted that wouldn't happen until next year. They've managed to design an inexpensive device that doesn't feel cheap and that's going to have significant impact in the market."

While digital readers are convenient for avid book readers on the go and those who travel frequently, their high prices have been a barrier to many.

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