Angus Kidman27 January 2010, 2:00 PM
The Australian-designed QuokkaPad will run Linux based OSes such as Google Android.
This week, it's going to be hard to escape the feeling that there's
nothing happening in the ebook and tablet market that isn't entirely about
Apple, but Australian entrepreneur Mike Ottoy is still confident there'll be
a gap for the QuokkaPad.
Ottoy, CEO of Ubiq Technologies, has been importing and selling ebook
readers to the Australian market since 1999, but is now concentrating his
energies on the soon-to-be-released QuokkaPad, a Linux-based ebook reader
largely aimed at the corporate market. The device has been designed in
Australia but will be manufactured in China.
While Ottoy told APC that it would be premature to comment on Apple's
plans ahead of its official announcement this Thursday, he did suggest that
pricing and content control rules would have a major impact on its success
amongst business users.
"Nobody is going to spend $1,000 on a reader device for their staff just
because it can play video," he said.
On the upside, Apple's announcement is likely to focus attention on the
availability of both free and DRM-free content for portable reader devices,
he said. "There's no point buying a DRM-protected ebook if you can buy the
same title in a DRM-free version."
While most discussions of the ebook market focus on selling to consumers,
Ottoy argues that there's also a major market for corporates that need to
share training manuals and other information with workers.
In those segments, the ability to easily import content in a range of
formats, to display information in colour (rather than the monochrome
display used by Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader) and to easily network to
a range of devices is important, he said.
The QuokkaPad is the size of a typical hardback novel. While that makes
it thicker than many existing models, Ottoy said that experimentation had
shown that thinner readers often induced hand strain if held in the same way
as a normal book. It offers a touch-screen interface, but also includes
buttons for page turning and for adjusting font sizes. Formats supported by
the reader include ePub, HTML and PDF (its native reader extracts the
formats from a ZIP file during reading).
The device includes an SD card reader, USB slot and Wi-Fi receiver,
though the latter can be replaced with an onboard 3G reader at the
manufacturing stage. The SD card can also be used as an alternate boot
device, making it possible for instance to run Android and use the Blio
reader platform on the system.
Ottoy has been testing a prototype version of the QuokkaPad with existing
clients over the past year, and plans to announce the final specifications
and price in mid-February.