Clearly Waterstones believes that there is room in the market for another e-Reader. Theirs had better have something that makes it say more than just “me, too!”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14841692

I think that they will have a tough time. With so many people buying from Amazon they will need something special to attract buyers. There is no way that people will buy this as well as a Kindle. Their best bet would have had an app to buy books for the iPad. Though I suspect that the Apple T&C would stop that.

I doubt it could offer more than either Apple or Amazon anyway. It would have to be able to open the common formats to be of any use anyway. It would, I expect, connect directly to their own online store. How something which appears to be globally provincial can expect to survive escapes me.

That was my other thought. Waterstone's are a UK network so the market would be minimal. Having an online presence makes a lot of sense. Though with Apple and Amazon having proprietary systems it means that it would have to be open which would then be down to the books DRM. I can see Apple and Amazon being sued over anticompetitive behaviour over this. If Waterstone's could offer their own Book app and allow customers to buy books from Waterstone's via their iPad without Apple taking a profit slice then that problem might go away. Apple will still get people buying the iPad.

I guess one of the benefits of being late to the party is that you get to see and hopefully, learn from the mistakes of others. Lots of if's and maybe's here, but if Waterstones manage to launch a competitively-priced reader with features that say, the Kindle lacks - whether that's hardware-specific like a touch-screen, or 'user-expreience' like the ability to lend books to people on your 'friend' list - and if they can promote it heavily enough to raise public awareness e.g. in-store promotions and help desks, then I think they have at least as much chance as, say the Sony, who have only just introduced a reader with WiFi, generally have a terrible online bookstore and rely on the likes of Waterstones to sell their hardware...

But yes, I agree that making it reliant on UK-only sales would be extremely risky financially - and James Daunt was an investment banker long before he became a bookshop owner.

So, I wonder if they'll make it cheap and e-ink to compete with the Kindle, or if they'll re-badge an Android tablet - like the B&N Nook Color?