Rupert Murdoch takes on Kindle

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is setting his sights on the growing electronic book market. Speaking at a cable industry event in Washington, D.C., Murdoch said his News Corp. is investing in a mobile device for reading newspapers, with a bigger screen than Amazon.com's Kindle, according to the Wall Street Journal. There were few other details, but Murdoch's embrace of e-books could shake things up for Amazon and the other players in the space.

Here's how the WSJ summarized Murdoch's comments:

For its part, Murdoch said News Corp. is investing in a mobile device for reading newspapers on a larger screen than the typical hand-held device, like Amazon Inc.'s (AMZN) Kindle device. He said the project is in its early software development stages, and he provided few details.

Murdoch talked about investing in a mobile device, as opposed to building one from scratch. That raises some interesting possibilities. A Silicon Valley company called Plastic Logic is developing a large-screen electronic reading device slated for launch in 2010 (Plastic Logic has signed up a number of newspaper and other content partners, and is working with Fictionwise, the e-book service recently acquired by Barnes & Noble).

Newspaper and magazine publisher Hearst has signaled it's planning a reading device of some kind. And a raft of other companies have come out with electronic reading devices, including Fujitsu, which is rolling out a pricey, color-capable reader in Japan.

Murdoch certainly has a lot of content to offer an electronic book reader, including the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, a raft of Australian and British newspapers, publisher HarperCollins, and magazines.

[Flickr photo via indio]

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