Before the e-reader wars , Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-readers were $259. Then B&N dropped the Nook to $199 and lowering its lower-end Wi-Fi version to $149. Amazon then dropped the Kindle’s price to $189. All the while, Borders stood in the background paring its nails. Border’s e-reader, the Kobo , has stayed steady at $149.99 and its smaller version, the Libre , at $119. Borders believes that’s the right place for the e-reader to be. “According to Boston Consulting Group , high prices continue to be a barrier to eReader adoption. The consumer sweet spot for eReader cost (is) between $100 and $150. This positions Borders for strong consumer adoption and market penetration.” Sponsor The most Borders has done in reaction to the e-reader duel is to add a little baksheesh to their offers. This morning Borders announced it was bundling the Kobo with a $20 Borders gift card, and double Borders Bucks that can be used towards a future purchase. Given that their two primary competitors are getting wise to the “sweet spot” idea, will Borders have to get its hands dirty? Before it counted on being by far the most reasonably-priced of the offerings. But what does it have if it loses that to its better known rivals? We have asked Borders and will publish an update if they respond. In the meantime, the iPad , which has sold several million in a couple of months, is despite its monthly fee, a threat for the time being. Read more ReadWriteWeb coverage of e-readers and e-books . Discuss

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Amazon just dropped the price of its Kindle e-reader to $189 . This move comes just a few hours after B&N announced the launch of its WiFi-only Nook for $149 and reduced the price of its 3G-enabled version of the Nook to $189. No doubt, Amazon’s price drop is a direct reaction to B&N’s attack on Amazon’s Kindle business and it will be interesting to see how B&N will react to Amazon’s new challenge. Sponsor In its press release, Amazon doesn’t address B&N’s Nook directly. Instead, Amazon takes a thinly veiled swipe at Apple’s iPad and stresses that the Kindle can be used in “bright sunlight” and that it is light enough for “one-handed reading.” In addition, Amazon stresses that even though the Kindle is a 3G device, users won’t have to pay monthly fees or sign annual contracts. For Half a Day, the Nook was the Cheapest 3G-Enabled E-Reader Now that the Kindle is $10 cheaper than the Nook 3G, Amazon’s e-reader is now the cheapest 3G-enabled standalone e-reader on the market – a claim that B&N was still able to make in its announcement this morning. The WiFi-only Nook is still $40 cheaper than the Kindle, but with its 3G connection, the Kindle offers a very significant extra feature for what is only a slightly higher price. How Will B&N React? Another Price Drop or Focus on Unique Features? It will be interesting to see how this race to the bottom will play out. Amazon has already shown that it is willing to take a loss on the Kindle business in order to gain market share. If B&N decides to undercut Amazon’s price again, chances are that Amazon will pull even within hours. If B&N decides to keep its current pricing scheme, chances are that the company will focus its marketing on the unique features of the Nook ecosystem, including the ability to lend e-book to friends for up to two weeks and B&N’s in-store reading program. In addition, the Nook’s small touchscreen at the bottom of the device gives B&N’s e-reader an additional hardware feature that the Kindle doesn’t offer yet. Discuss

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Barnes & Noble just announced the launch of a WiFi-only version of its Nook e-book reader . This new version of the Nook will retail for $149. In addition, B&N also dropped the price of the 3G-enabled Nook to $199. Besides being WiFi-only, the new version of the Nook is virtually identical to the Nook 3G. It will come with the same set of features as the original Nook , including the ability to lend some e-books to friends and use B&N’s “Read in Store” feature to browse complete books on the Nook while using B&N’s in-store WiFi network. Sponsor The WiFi-only Nook is available for pre-order now and will ship later this week. Thanks to an agreement with AT&T, Nook WiFi owners will receive complimentary access to AT&T’s WiFi network. Will the Kindle Follow? As dedicated e-readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader and the Nook come under strong pressure from tablets like the iPad, chances are that we will see more price drops in the near future. At $259, the cheapest version of the Kindle now looks overpriced compared to the Nook, which also offers a wider range of features. As B&N’s press release notes, at $199, the Nook 3G is now “the market’s first under-$200 dedicated full-featured eBook reader that offers both free 3G wireless and Wi-Fi connectivity.” The Beginning of the End for E-Readers? As Fast Company’s Kit Eaton points out , B&N’s price drop can also be seen as the beginning of the “e-reader’s demise” and the start of a race to the bottom. As manufacturers struggle to bring the price of their devices down to the point where e-readers become attractive to a mainstream audience, they inevitably also have to cut some features. At the same time, tablets offer far more flexibility than dedicated e-readers. According to a recent study by Informa Telecoms & Media, the market for dedicated e-readers will likely peak within the next two years, as consumers flock to tablet computers instead. According to Informa, the only way for e-readers to survive is to strip the devices of their wireless connectivity and make them as cheap as possible (under $99). Discuss

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Dedicated e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook are coming under increasing pressure from mobile phones and tablet devices like the iPad. According to the latest research from Informa Telecoms & Media , sales of e-readers with broadband connections will peak in 2014, as users decide to opt for multi-purpose devices like the iPad. According to Informa, the best way for e-reader manufacturers to survive is to focus on cheap devices that don’t feature built-in wireless connectivity. Sponsor The Real Question: E-Paper or LCD Displays? Many readers swear by e-paper displays that look and “feel” more like regular paper than traditional computer displays. These e-paper displays don’t need backlighting and consume far less power than tablets that use back-lighted displays. A number of e-paper manufacturers are working hard on developing color displays with faster refresh rates that will allow Kindle-like devices to compete with the feature set of tablets. The question, of course, is if users will really flock to low-end e-readers or if they will opt for more expensive multi-purpose devices like the iPad instead. In the near future, some of these tablets will likely feature more advanced e-paper displays that will combine the best of both worlds, though they will probably cost about the same as an iPad. The Disadvantages of Dedicated E-Readers For now, however, these advanced displays aren’t ready for the consumer market, while tablets are getting more market share and iPad apps like Wired’s new magazine app get a chance to show the advantages of tablet computers. A number of universities have experimented with the Kindle as a textbook reader, and it’s quickly becoming clear that today’s e-readers aren’t ready for this market, as students ask for a more flexible devices that are more akin to tablet computers than a dedicated e-readers. Sony Expands This study comes on the same day that Sony announced its plans to expand the availability of its e-reader to Japan, China, Australia and a number of European countries. Asia is one of the fastest growing markets for e-readers, so this move definitely makes sense. With its low-end e-readers , Sony will be in a good position if Informa’s predictions turn out to be true. Discuss

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Good news, Android owners! One of the iPhone and iPad’s best mobile applications, the Amazon Kindle app, is coming soon to phones running the Google Android mobile operating system. Like all Kindle products, the Android app will include Amazon’s Whispersync technology, which synchronizes reading progress, notes and bookmarks across devices including Kindle brand e-readers, desktop software and mobile applications. Sponsor Techcrunch, who reported the news late last night when the press release hit the wires, notes that the new Android app will include a native Kindle bookstore that operates within the mobile application itself (at least that’s what the headline appears to imply: “You Can Buy Books in It.”) This would be a bit different than how the iPhone and iPad Kindle apps work – they redirect you to the device’s web browser so you can purchase Kindle books from Amazon’s mobile-optimized website. Many have suspected that the reason Amazon’s Apple-compatible applications do this redirection is so they don’t compete with Apple’s own venture into mobile e-books: Apple iBooks. Originally released alongside the new iPad, the Apple iBooks mobile application is now available for iPhones and iPod Touch devices, too. Native Bookstore? A native bookstore within the Android app would be ideal, and definitely a selling point for not just the app itself, but for Android phones in general as yet another example of how Apple’s application restrictions lead to a less than ideal experience for its smartphone owners. However, it’s unclear if that’s the case from the way both the Kindle for Android website text and the press release text is worded (i.e. ” the Kindle Store optimized for your Android phone “). Also, the screenshot included with the press release shows the Android Kindle Store which looks identical to the mobile website the iPhone sends you to when you want to find a new book. Of course, that’s not to say that the Android app doesn’t wrap the mobile site into the application itself as opposed to kicking you out of the app and redirecting you to the mobile web browser. The Kindle Blackberry application keeps you in-app, so it’s likely that the Android app will as well. But to be sure, we’ve contacted Amazon for clarification. In any event, what we do know about the coming Kindle for Android app is that it will be out “later this summer” and will provide access to 540,000 books, plus tens of thousands of free classics. As mentioned above, the app supports Whispersync and it also will offer five different font sizes, the ability to read the beginning of a book prior to purchase, multiple ways to flip through pages and support for both portrait and landscape reading modes. Instead Android phone owners can sign up here to be notified when the Kindle for Android application becomes available. Discuss

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