AUO Plans to Slash e-Book Pricing to $100 by 2011

High retail price has always been blamed as one of the reasons that slow down the growth of e-book market especially in current market situation. As an effort to break the barrier, AUO (AU Optronics), the famous LCD panel maker has set an aggressive goal to bring down next generation e-book’s manufacturing and BOM (Bill of Material) cost so that the retail price can be slashed by half in two years time.

The Taiwan manufacturer plans to leverage its experience in LCD design and manufacturing to have technology breakthrough so that its basic hardware cost can be further reduced. Generally, a normal range e-book such as Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader Pocket edition will cost $200 or more which is quite expensive for an average user. Consumers would rather spend a bit more to get an all-in-one gadget with electronics reading capability on top of standard smartphone feature sets.

Obviously, AUO has been trying to gain back some of its lost market share from Prime View, its rival that gotten manufacturing contract for Amazon and Sony’s products. Regardless of what it is, this is definitel a good news for end users and they will probably able to purchase and enjoy a $150 e-book reader by 2010 and further cost-down version of $100 dedicated electronics reading device by 2011.