Friday, July 11, 2008

BPN 1155 French telco SFR in e-readers

While I was in Paris a lot of e-reader news came out in France. I knew that the tenth e-reader round table Rencontres Tebaldo was held on July 8. But being back at my desk, I read that the telecom company SFR (Société Française de Radiotéléphonie) had started a pilot with the wireless e-reader GeR2, adapted for the new Ganaxa publishing platform on July 4. The screen of the e-reader is digital paper and is six inches in diameter like a page of a pocket book. The format is of a pocket book (18,8 cm x 11,8 cm x 0,85 cm) and very light (175 grams). It will stay charged for 10 to 15 days and reloads in three hours. The pilot carried out by SFR is on the new telecom and developing open platform, developed by Ganaxa the GPP (Ganaxa Publishing Platform), for the press, publishers and advertisers, integrating tools for creation, production, diffusion, consultation and display. The e-reader device works won a bluetooth module which connects to the mobile. In turn this mobile link up with the network 3G/3G+ of SFR.

And it looks like SFR has learned basic lessons on introducing e-readers. With the e-reader it offers seven major press titles of press (Les Echos, Le Monde, L’Equipe, Le Parisien, Le Figaro and L’AFP) as well as books from seven major publishers large actors of the world of (Dunod, Flammarion, Hachette, M21 éditions, Plon, Ramsay, Solar).

SFR wants to have 100 test users. They must be clients of SFR. They will have access to the contents of the daily editions of the newspapers and t the ten recent books (romance, biographies, guides,…). The content will be protected by a system of DRM. Each machine has a single serial number; the readers are thus identified and the files containing the works are encrypted so that only the identified readers can download them. It is neither possible to transfer a downloaded work to another e-reader or another platform.

The pilot is to test, in particular, the ergonomics of the product, its use in situations of mobility and the relevance of the content offer. The lessons drawn from the pilot will make it possible for SFR to adapt the device and content offer before the launch in September.

The SFR e-reader is the third e-reader after the iLiad and Kindle with wireless facilities and the first Bluetooth equipped device. SFR is the first company to launch a full-fledged pilot, bringing a group of newspaper and book publishers in from the start. This will educate publishers in one go and yield a lot of publicity for the pilot as well as a lot of user experiences. A really smart move.

Blog Posting Number: 1155

Tags: e-reader, e-book, DRM, ,

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