IRex: Kindle for the Enterprise?
Posted on September 23, 2009 |
On Wednesday, iRex Technologies said its new touchscreen e-book reader will go on sale in October with a boost from retail partner Best Buy and wireless service provider Verizon. But as it draws aim at e-reader incumbents Amazon and Sony, iRex hopes to attract another, even more powerful ally: your boss.
A Dutch spin-off from electronics giant Philips, iRex already has a track record selling e-readers to enterprise customers in Europe. Members of the city council in Hardenberg, Netherlands replaced their stacks of papers with iRex readers, which wirelessly refresh the minutes and agenda of their meetings. Airlines like Morocco-based Royal Air Maroc have begun equipping pilots with digital readers containing flight charts.
IRex is entering the U.S. market with an initial focus on consumers, what North America CEO Kevin Hamilton calls "the low-hanging fruit." But he says the opportunity "may be bigger" with businesses, where iRex's device is likely to have more appeal than Amazon's Kindle. Unlike the Kindle, iRex's new 8.1-inch, $400 DR800SG can download files in most formats ("If you can print it to a printer you can run it on the device," Hamilton says), its software runs on open-source operating system Linux, and it has security features, like the ability to remotely erase files on an entire fleet of readers.
Surprisingly, there's already demand for e-readers in the office, according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "You’re going to see both top-down implementation -- companies will distribute these devices to their employees -- and you'll also have bottom-up growth like the iPhone, where consumers use this in their own lives and like it so much that they want to bring it to work with them," Epps says.
