Dangdang’s Upcoming E-Reader Shown in Leaked Photo, Coming to China in April

This is what purports to be Dangdang's upcoming e-reader hardware.

Dangdang (NYSE:DANG) launched its e-book store and smartphone apps on December 21st last year, and made it clear that an actual e-reader would be coming in Q2 2012. And today we get a leaked image (pictured right) of what purports to be Dangdang’s e-reader hardware, with the rumor that it’ll launch in April this year. It’s not clear which company is serving as the OEM.

It looks to be a budget device, not too dissimilar from the original Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle with its e-ink screen, with the rumor suggesting that its price won’t exceed 499 RMB (US$79 16). All this pretty specific information leads us to suspect that this is a deliberate ‘leak’ from inside Dangdang, which needs to keep people aware that there’s more to come. And it could also serve to distract from the lukewarm reception to its e-book store from the media, which has suggested that the 50,000 titles are mostly outdated and pretty boring.

The B2C e-commerce site has said it will invest a lot in the e-book market as a possible transition away from its paper books in the long-term. It’s possible that Dangdang’s most direct rival, 360Buy, might also enter the e-book sector – and possibly with hardware of its own.

Bizarrely, Dangdang has so far failed to get its e-reader apps for Android, iPhone, and iPad into the respective official app stores, meaning that iOS users would need to have a jail-broken device before they can install it. That’s not exactly great planning.

[Source: Sina Tech news – article in Chinese]