e-books have been introduced to market by only a few players so far — players such as Sony and Panasonic — but the products have not fared too well. While the products themselves may be acceptable, the problem has been a lack of content. Judging by todays announcements, that’s about to change.

Chris Chinnock
Sr. Analyst and Sr. Editor
of Insight Media

According to a Reuters’ report this morning, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. and two other Japanese companies said they would set up a joint venture to sell electronic book readers and distribute novels and comics via the Internet.

Beginning October 2nd, the new JV will be called Words Gear Co. Ltd.. It will be capitalized with about $2M in funding with Matsushita owning the major stake (42.1%), followed by Japanese publisher Kadokawa Holdings Inc. (42.1%), with the remainder owned by Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., Japan’s third-largest television station.

Words Gear expects to soon offer about 10K titles. And because a broadcaster is part of the new JV, we can assume these books will eventually be broadcast to paying customers, although the initial distribution model is via Internet download. The service will only be offered in Japan for now, however.

Takakazu Otsuki, president of the new company, said he aims for annual revenue of about 9B yen through hardware and content sales by the year ending March 2011.

The hardware will consist of an e-book product from Matsushita offered under the Panasonic brand. However, Sony has announced a new e-book reader too, which we presume, will access the same content.

Panasonic’s original e-book reader was called the Sigma Book. It consists of two 7.1-inch screens configured side-by-side offering a combined resolution of XGA, and sells for about $400. The Toshiba XDTC-100 seems to be a similar model, but is offered for around $275. Panasonic’s new e-book reader, available in November, is said to be smaller than a paperback with a 5.6-inch LCD display. Word Gear aims to sell about 10K of these e-book readers, priced at about $345, by next March.

Meanwhile, according to the company, Sony’s new e-book reader will be available next month,. It features a high-resolution electronic-paper (e-paper) display instead of the LCD display. This technology is bi-stable meaning it can have a very long battery life - about 7,500 continuous page turns, according to Sony. The Sony reader will be priced at $350.