eBook Applications LLC, a software development team from Moscow (Russia) with headquarters in NYC, helps a lot to sell PRS e-readers in Eastern Europe and Middle East independently from Sony.
During almost two years the company creates independent software packages for Sony PRS readers and provides users by the firmware for free. At the same time eBook Applications develops software for one of the Taiwanese OEMs and for one of the famous brand devices on Russian market.
Michael Lev, eBA director of Business Development, tells to dbReaders why the company works with PRS software.
dbR: Why have you selected Sony PRS readers as the main direction?
M.L.: We can not develop our platform in vacuum. Feedback from our commercial products was not sufficient to understand needs of the readers community. In order to create truly international quality product we needed a reliable hardware platform which would be distributed worldwide with active user community which would work with us on refining our software. We decided to work with Sony Readers and quite happy about it. We received a great feedback to our PRS-300 firmware and had a long and fruitful beta-testing phase with PRS-x50 devices. Working with community also helps us to plan and prioritize functionality and new features for development
dbR: Could you tell more about conflict of interests or other ‘hiccups’ in this software market?
M.L.: There are great devices from Sony, Kindle and B&N but they do not distribute or do not work well for users in many countries outside of US, due to a number of reasons: different economic situation, language support requirements, payment systems, commonly used ebook formats etc. Reader devices’ niche in these countries is occupied with devices which have hardware and software far from the industry best. The only reason why people buy these devices because they support domestic languages and formats. For example for Eastern Europe it is important to support cyrillic languages and fb2, djvu formats whereas wifi, online markets and DRM support are not as important.
dbR: What is original manufacturers attitude to your developments? Do you contact them during programming phase?
M.L.: We have tried to contact Sony, but have not received any response from them. One thing is for sure – our software helps a lot to sell these devices in Eastern Europe and Middle East, so I guess that Sony should be happy about our software. We still would like to get in touch with them since it would make our life much easier if we would have technical documentation as well as help them increase their sales in Eastern Europe and other regions.
dbR: Does the firmware extend or replace original functionality?
M.L.: It completely replaces it. Our firmware is a standalone software package which can be ported to any third party device. Please do not confuse it with various extension packages and localizations that exist for Sony devices.
dbR: Does the popularity of this software grow or stay stable?
M.L.: It is hard to say since we just launched it for Sony x50 series, but initial data show much higher download rate than when we launched for PRS-300. We are getting a very good feedback from our users as well.
dbR: Where from do you take ideas for the new software updates?
M.L.: We are active users of our products ourselves so we come up with a lot of improvements and features. Also as I mentioned before we work with our users via forums and e-mails, which helps us to understand needs of the users in many regions.
dbR: How do you make profit from you products if it can be downloaded/used for free?
M.L.: We do not make profit from Sony users other than we get a great free testing and marketing from Sony users community. Nevertheless we are a commercial company and planning to monetize our product through sales to OEMs
dbR: What are company’s plans for near future?
M.L.: We are planning to work on many new features for Sony x50 to make it much better than any competitors software as well as original Sony firmware. Then we have plans to make ports for Kindle and Nook devices to become a most popular alternative software package.
This will help us to monetize through sales to OEMs, as well as through integration with regional ebook stores.
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