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New Kobo Vox Coming This Fall?

When Kobo held their big announcement at BEA a few weeks back there was a noticeable lack of device news.There was lots of talk of Kobo Writing Life but no news about their next gadget. Today I learned that Kobo might indeed be working on one.

One MobileRead member was in her local Indigo bookstore last night. She went there to replace her Kobo Vox, but after having a short conversation with the clerk she didn’t:

I was at Indigo today to exchange my Vox (battery issues) and wound up asking for an outright refund: the rep told me they had just had a big meeting at every store to warn them that a new Vox was coming in the fall. Between that and the new Google tablet, it makes sense to wait another month or so.

There’s nothing in the FCC at the moment (not with Kobo’s mark on it anyway), and I don’t have any evidence to support it. I alos checked with Kobo, but they have not yet responded.

But it makes sense to me, and the source (the Vox owner)  is none other than ficbot, who you might as Joanna. She blogs over at TeleRead, and if she says she was told something you can believe it.

The Vox was outdated and overpriced on the day it shipped, leaving it not much of a market.  It also only offered a limited election of apps when it launched, a shortcoming that was eventually fixed a few weeks back.  And to be honest, that last bit of news is the other reason why I believe today’s rumor. Kob wouldn’t have bothered getting the Vox certified for Google Play if they weren’t planning to continue to develop the platform.

Would anyone care to speculate on the next one? What specs would you want to see on it?

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Comments


Mike Cane June 29, 2012 um 11:26 am

The Nexus 7 seems to have settled the minimum spec for 7″ tablets the same way iPad has done for 9.7″ (or anything larger than 7″). Kobo has to at least meet that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s $199 with that new low-cost Tegra 3 package. Thing is, someone just said the N7 infringes on Nokia patents (and probably others) so there’s that to consider now too.

The bigger question for Kobo is where do they go with all this? Stick with Android? I suspect the next Nook color device will be based on WinRT — IF B&N has the guts to alienate current customers who have foolishly invested in Android apps via B&N’s App Store.


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