Following its rivals Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Sony Corp. has dropped the pricing of its electronic books readers in the U.S. The move will help to attract new customers and make general public more familiar with the electronic books in general and Sony Reader line in particular.

From now on, Sony Reader Pocket Edition costs $149, the Touch Edition retails for $169 and the Daily Edition has recommended price of $299. Unfortunately, Sony only dropped the pricing of its Readers by $20 to $50 and it is pretty hard to expect major sales boost from that. Nonetheless, the trend of more available e-book readers is definitely positive for the consumer.

For the vast majority of general consumers the price of electronics should be below $100 to catalyze them buy it. Unfortunately for electronic book readers, their current pricing is very close to manufacturing costs.

“With these cuts, e-book readers from Barnes & Noble as well as Amazon now are priced at about the breakeven level with their dill of materials (BOM) and manufacturing costs. With zero profits on their hardware, both these companies now hope to make their money in this market through the sale of books,” said William Kidd, director and principal analyst of financial services for iSuppli, reports eWeek web-site.

Tags: Sony, E-Book