ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

It seems everyone's making e-readers-- now Sharp takes on the Japanese market with its 2 Android-based Galapagos tablets/e-readers.

The tablets come in 2 sizes-- 5.5" (1024x600 resolution) and 10.8" (1366x800 resolution) colour LCD screens. Both support standard wifi connectivity and carry 8GB microSD memory card, built-in speaker, USB port and web browser.

Users can export pdf files or text to the tablets' clipboard, and convert data to XMDF format for viewing.

Sharp will open the Tsutaya Galapagos e-bookstore to accompany the devices. The store will offer books, magazines, videos and newspapers for the Japanese market. By 2011 the service should also be available for Sharp smartphones.

Go Sharp Galapagos

The Russian government owned nanotechnology company Russnano is to invest $150 million in e-reader screen manufacture.

The Financial Times reports screens manufactured in Russia will be sent to Taiwan for assembly before export.

Russia appears to be a huge potential market for e-readers. Russians download books onto any device they find-- from laptops to mobile phones and iPads.

Even though Russians are avid readers, a number of high profile book retailers went bankrupt following the economic crisis. E-book sales, however, remain bouyant and are only expected to grow further as the Russian economy recovers.

Ths goes to show e-readers are growing as their own device category, following the Kindle's success and readers' acceptance e-ink displays.

Go Betting on Russia's E-Readers

No, we didn't misplace a "0." We tend to be self-centered and just don't look outside the usual suspects.

So where is this giant of a show? Tokyo? Beijing? Shanghai?

None of these above, the records were broken once again at Sitex  2010, as more than 900,000 people visited the four-day show at the Singapore Expo and splurged some $52 million on gadgets and gizmos. Among the more popular items were tablet computers, Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation systems and digital cameras.

Now SITEX is in Singapore, an island with 5 million people so apparently nearly 1 out of every 5 people went to look at and shop for consumer electronics. (We have the feeling the visitors are counted per entry not per visitor which may then include repeat visits, but impressive nonetheless.)

Imagine an IFA on Malta and you might have the EU equivalent in impact.  Or, more accurately, a show in Belgium with 1.8 million visitors in 4 days at Heysel (would have to be a beer festival, we think).

But that's the only rub: unlike IFA, CES the Sitex only has 160 exhibitors (and 44 were new ones).

CES had 120,000 or so visitors viewing 2500 exhibitors, a ratio of 48 trade visitors per exhibitor vs. Sitex's 5625 consumers per exhibitor.

Or Berlin's IFA with 235,000 attendees (public and dealers) and 1423 exhibitors...a ratio of 165 attendees to each exhibitor.

You may want to compare IFA's claim that 3.5 billion euros of orders were taken (trade orders) versus Sitex's  $52 million consumer orders ($57.77 per visitor).

Go Sitex

Attachmate is a winner as it walks away as the new owner of Novell, after a $2.2 billion buy-out. Attachmate, a smaller software company than Novell, is owned by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thomas Bravo.

It was Microsoft who opened the door for the $2.2b sale by organising a consortium to add $450m cash into Novell's coffers in return for surgically removing some of its IP rights portfolio. This was not generosity on the part of Microsoft (did you think?) but an action to keep trolls out of specific software patents that Microsoft values from a cross-licensing deal in 2007.

Microsoft's premptive action enabled a deal held up for months over the complexity of Novell's collection of rights and therefore an evaluation of its business.

Novell played a central part in the Linux rights struggle and Europeans will wonder about Suse, the German brand acquired previously by Novell. Attachmate says Suse will run as a separate business unit, prompting some analysts to consider if Attachmate might flip this unit to VMWare or another iinterested party for more cash to make this whole deal easier to swallow.

Go Novell Agrees to be Acquired by Attachmate Corporation