Sony's Reader has been around longer than Kindle and just never seemed to get going the way Kindle has. But Sony's not going down without a fight. It launched a new marketing campaign for the Reader and also announced March 19 that it had partnered with Google to put Google's 500,000 public domain e-books on the Reader for free.
Kindle Threat: Low. Sony's Reader is going to need more sizzle and more steak -- a flashier device with better functions, that is -- if it's going to compete with Kindle as a dedicated e-reading device. What else does Sony have to offer the market? Name recognition might be one thing, said Forrester's Rotman Epps -- Sony is very well known throughout the world, especially in far-flung markets where Kindle may not have penetrated.
