Remember a few months ago, when every company that produced consumer devices, from Black and Decker to Bose was suddenly producing a netbook? Well, it seems that Ebook Readers are the new Netbooks, as vendors are coming out of the woodwork to announce new models.

Next up, sound technology pioneers Creative, who at their recent Annual General Meeting unexpectedly showed off a working prototype of an Ebook Reader they are calling a MediaBook. Not much is known about it however, save that it has a touchscreen, text-to-speech function an SD memory card slot and uses Creative’s Zii platform. This means that the MediaBook will also likely be running on either their own Plazsma OS, Android, or some combination of the two and be heavily multimedia focused.

See more after the jump.

Willie Png, Creative’s VP of strategic business says that Creative’s MediaBook will utilize  “videos, pictures, text and services in one device that supports a media-rich experience.” It certainly sounds like Creative is intending the MediaBook to be more of a MID (Mobile Internet Device) than a traditional Ebook. Considering that the first device to be based on the Zii platform, the Zii EGG has yet to make it to market and there are still more odd buzzwords connected to Zii then practical applications (what the devil is “stem cell computing” anyway?), I am sure Creative is eager to get any product out there to showcase the technol,ogy, no matter what niche it fills.

On the Ebook side, Creative is lining up a lot of media heavyweight support in Asia. Top of that list is the single largest publisher in Singapore, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) which publishes 17 newspapers and more than 100 magazines. That would provide a lot of Asian focused content for the new device.

Creative certainly needs a hit as their line of MP3 players have been pushed nearly out of the “Anything But iPod” market by SanDisk and a resurgent Zune. Could a MID flavored Ebook Reader be the device they need to bring the Zii platform to market at last. Considering Creative’s proud history, it will certainly be worth a look.

(Source: Epizenter)

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).