Android Kindle Clone Coming from Barnes & Noble

A report from the Wall Street Journal claims that book retailer chain Barnes & Noble is planning to sell its own e-book reader to compete with Amazon's Kindle. The device, expected to run Googles Android system, will be a wireless tablet with 6 inch touch screen. Price range was not mentioned and Barnes & noble declined comment on the story, but the report pegged the release date as early as November 2009.

"We have made no announcement of an e-book reader device," said Mary Ellen Keating, of Barnes & Noble corporate communications. We can tell you that Barnes & Noble is in the e-book market already, having launch of its own digital-book store this summer. The store lets customers download and read digital books in a range of platforms, such as Apples iPhone, BlackBerry smartphones and iPods. Barnes & Noble is also anticipated to be exclusive e-book supplier for the upcoming Plastic Logic eReader, to be released early next year. One wonders how Plastic Logic will take the possibility of B&N coming out with a competing product. Reports suggest that the B&N device is more likely to be a direct competitor to Amazon's Kindle 2.

Now if Barnes & Noble can just get their reader to work in the Canadian market, they could steal it from under Amazons nose, as even the Kindle International version does still not let Canadian users download books, magazines or newspapers from Amazon. 2009 E-book reader sales are estimated by Forrester to reach 3 million units in the United States, with Amazon's Kindle taking around 60 percent of the market, and Sony's Reader at 35 percent.