Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BDR who wrote (31177)	9/7/2000 4:55:02 PM
From: StockHawk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

>>Could you elaborate? << from: E-Book Standards Fight July 31, 2000 thestandard.com " The Ellroy auction, along with Stephen King's recent forays into e-publishing, make it clear that online books are ready for prime time. But behind the stories of big-name authors and slick new e-book gadgets, there's competition between multibillion-dollar companies vying to control the way online books will be formatted, distributed and displayed. On one side, there's Adobe, pushing its widespread PDF, or portable document format, as the de facto e-book file standard; on the other side, there's Microsoft (MSFT) and Gemstar, the chief architects behind a new, open e-book formatting specification called OEB, or open e-book. The two groups are banging their drums, hoping to persuade everyone to march along to their particular technology. And publishers, software companies, device makers and consumers are warily following along, hoping they aren't going to end up in Betamax-land." "For Microsoft, an OEB victory would mean increased sales of its new Windows CE operating system, which features OEB reading software called Microsoft Reader. And for Gemstar, which in January bought SoftBook and NuvoMedia, currently the only dedicated e-book device companies, OEB's dominance would mean it made the right decision to use the file format in its device, which will be manufactured by Philips." "Microsoft has been making deals left and right with online bookstores like Barnesandnoble.com and Contentville to offer e-books in the Microsoft Reader format, and Henry Yuen, chairman and chief executive of Gemstar, has told publishers that his company will engage in a media awareness campaign to turn e-book devices into a "product category." With NuvoMedia and SoftBook in his pocket, Yuen could stand to profit; Jupiter Communications (JPTR) predicts that in five years there will be 6.5 million dedicated e-book devices, and that annual e-book sales could exceed $125 million. Those numbers sound good to merchants gearing up for an e-book explosion, like Barnesandnoble.com, which currently sells e-books for Gemstar's Rocket e-book and recently announced it would offer 2,000 Microsoft Reader titles later this summer." StockHawk