14 DAY TRIAL // The market for e-book readers appears to be expanding as a number of companies are showing their interest in developing such devices of their own. Such is the case with Taiwanese hardware manufacturer MSI, which has recently announced that it is currently working on the development of an e-book reader designed to take advantage of the performance and features that are enabled by NVIDIA's Tegra chip. Meanwhile, the other two leading Taiwanese companies, ASUS and Gigabyte, have also announced their plans for the growing market for e-book readers.
According to a recent news-article on Digitimes, citing MSI's chairman Joseph Hsu, the Taiwanese company is planning on entering the e-book market with a device of its own, which is currently under development. Said device appears to still need some work, which is why the company plans to reveal more details regarding its specifications, sometime in the first half of 2010, although that doesn't necessarily meant that an MSI-designed e-book reader will be available early next year.
The same articles claims that MSI's competition, Gigabyte and ASUS, have also announced their plans in the fast growing market. According to said article, Richard Ma, Gigabyte's vice president, says that the company has no plan to release a smartbook or an e-book reader at this time. Meanwhile, ASUS is planning the launch of its previously announced 9-inch grayscale e-book reader, which should debut soon enough, in limited quantities and only for niche markets.
As far as ASUS is concerned, the company is planning to roll out another e-book reader, most likely after the launch of the aforementioned one, which will be targeting the consumer market and is scheduled to arrive in the first quarter of 2010. It is interesting to note that MSI is working with NVIDIA on the development of a Tegra-based device, which only strengthens the fact that NVIDIA is placing a major bet on its Tegra family of processors.