Barnes & Noble to Launch Plastic Logic eBook [Color eBook Comes in Spring 2010]

If there is probably one thing that we don’t need at this point in time, that’s another eBook reader. There are plenty such gadgets as it is, with Amazon’s Kindles being the most famous ones available. Barnes and Nobles however feels lucky enough to launch a similar product and their color eBook reader is expected to arrive in Spring 2010.

The device in question has been apparently leaked at the CTIA show. According to a Barnes & Noble representative, the future eBook will be made by Plastic Logic and it will feature a color screen. The eBook reader should be as big as a paperback and it would run a Barnes & Noble eBook reader application. Before we get to see the color version Plastic Logic will also launch a grayscale eBook reader. In fact the rumored 6-inch Barnes & Noble device should hit the stores sometime next month, just in time for the holidays. Plastic Logic has also confirmed that the color model is just “around the corner” so a Spring 2010 release sounds plausible enough. Barnes & Noble will be the first company to launch a color eBook reader but will that be enough to impress us?

In an earlier post on TFTS I was telling you how, in the near future, it will make more sense getting a tablet PC instead of an eBook reader. Apple and Microsoft are each going to launch one early next year while several other minions are working on their tablets too. The devices will have enough resources to do plenty of things, one of them being acting as an eBook reader with multitouch support. And it will all be available in color. So if we happen to buy a tablet in a few months, would we really be interested in a color eBook that can’t offer us as many features as a tablet would?

What Barnes and Noble should do is develop a great eBook reader application, one that is capable to run properly on iPhones, BlackBerry and Android smartphones and tablets of course. After all neither Apple nor Microsoft have all that content to offer to future tablet owners when it comes to eBooks, although that might change in the near future. With all that in mind it will be interesting to see if Amazon and Sony decide to pursue similar dreams involving color eBook readers.