Foxit To Offer Lighter, Cheaper e-Reader

December 19, 2008 By Geoff Duncan

Foxit Software has announced it will start selling its eSlick portable reader in January, taking on (and undercutting) the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.

PDF software developer Foxit Software has announced it will begin selling a new Foxit eSlick electronic reader from its Web site beginning in January, offering many of the features of readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, but at a lower price point. The eSlick will be just 0.4 inches thick, offer a built-in MP3 player, and support text and PDF documents—plus ship with desktop software that enabled users to convert other document formats to PDF.

The eSlick will offer storage via an SD card slot (the unit will ship with a 2 GB card, but supports 4 GB cards too), offers USB 2.0 connectivity, and has 129 MB of internal memory. The unit is built on an embedded LInux operating system, and features an 800 by 600-pixel 166 dpi eInk display with four levels of gray, and users can easier scale the size of the font used on the display for easier reading. The eSlick uses a rechargeable lithium ion battery, and the unit should get up to 8,000 page views on a single charge.

Foxit plans to make the first devices available in black, grey, or white, at an initial price of $259—that’s significantly cheaper than the (out of stock) $359 Amazon Kindle or the $400 Sony Reader. The downsides of the eSlick, in comparison, it that it doesn’t come with access to its own bookstores—both Amazon and Sony have extensive arrangements with publishers to offer current content for their units—and the eSlick doesn’t have any sort of wireless capability, constraining users to side-loading content from a PC.

Foxit is accepting pre-orders for the eSlick now; the units should go on sale via its Web site in January and eventually move into other retail sales channels.

Showing 4 comments

A reader at 7:18pm 19th December 2008 Everyone seems to be saying over and over that the Kindle is out of stock, and this is not really true. You can get refurbished Kindles now. In fact, I know of several people who have been able to get refurbished Kindles through talkingbookslibrarian.blogspot.com/2008/12/buy-refurbished-kindle-how-to-get-cheap_12.html
John at 5:56pm 19th December 2008 Kindle has internet for life for the extra 100 dollars with newspaper subscriptions possible. The Sony Reader PRS-505 is thinner, has more gray scales, better resolution at 170 dpi, and more internal memory for only 10 dollars more at Amazon.com. I would agree with your sobering assessment that Fox-it lacks the arrangements with publishers that Amazona and Sony have. One must honestly wonder if Fox-it seriously understands the product space its attempting to get into.
John at 5:56pm 19th December 2008 Kindle has internet for life for the extra 100 dollars with newspaper subscriptions possible. The Sony Reader PRS-505 is thinner, has more gray scales, better resolution at 170 dpi, and more internal memory for only 10 dollars more at Amazon.com. One must honestly wonder if Fox-it really can survive in such an environment.
John at 5:56pm 19th December 2008 I respectfully disagree with your characterization of its competition. Kindle has internet for life for the extra 100 dollars. The Sony Reader PRS-505 is thinner, has more gray scales, better resolution at 170 dpi, and more internal memory for only 10 dollars more at Amazon.com. My point is that your characterization that the Fox-it reader is significantly cheaper and thus a serious competitor is a bit misleading. I believe the fact is they will have a very difficult time, in this category.