Kobo Unveils New eReading Lineup, Taking Readers Beyond The Book

-- Kobo Arc 10HD, Kobo Arc 7HD and Kobo Arc 7 tablets and the Kobo Aura 6" E Ink eReader, put reading first with enhanced Reading Life platform

TORONTO, Aug. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Kobo, a global leader in eReading, today announced its new lineup of eReading devices, featuring the new Kobo Aura 6" E Ink eReader and the Google-certified Kobo Arc 10HD and two Kobo Arc 7 tablets. Designed for Readers, the new lineup is built on Kobo's unique user experience, Reading Life, enabling the collection, curation and discovery of content, delivering on the company's promise to put reading first.

"Kobo remains focused on Reading; a time-honoured passion that keeps people informed, lets them escape, learn about new cultures, see things from a new perspective, travel back in time, and imagine new worlds," said Michael Serbinis, CEO, Kobo. "With magazines joining our eBookstore, a new kids experience, and the best eReading devices possible, we will help Readers find more of what they love – taking them beyond the book."

To best showcase the company's world-class bookstore with 4-million titles, which now includes magazines and a dedicated Kids Store, the NVIDIA®-powered Kobo Arc 10HD and Kobo Arc 7HD tablets offer beautiful and responsive high definition displays and uncompromised access to Android™ 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and the Google Play™ Store. With Reading Life, Kobo's reading-first user experience, Readers can discover more of the content they're interested in with new ways to organize and curate collections of eBooks, magazines and other multimedia content from across the Web including movies, music and games. Kobo's new Reading Mode feature eliminates distracting notifications and pop-ups from email, apps and social media, optimizes the lighting settings, and extends the tablet battery life from hours to days.

For Readers who prefer a dedicated reading experience, Kobo has created the beautiful Kobo Aura 6" E Ink eReader, which boasts a stunning edge-to-edge, high-resolution (212 dpi) display. The Kobo Aura leverages a new low-flash screen technology to virtually eliminate ghosting and page refresh for the best book-like reading experience, and holds up to 3,000 books and lasts more than two months on a single charge. Plus, for the first time ever, Readers can now send articles and webpages to read on their E Ink devices through the company's partnership with Pocket.

Across its new lineup of eReading tablets and E Ink eReaders, Kobo is helping Readers discover more of the content they're interested in with the company's all-new Beyond the Book experience, which highlights key topics within a book and provides aggregated content from across the Web known as Collections. To share Kobo's own passion for discovering great reading materials, Featured Collections are personalized with Kobo's own editorial voice as well as respected influencers including authors, publishers, and other notable people who are experts in their field. 

UNITING BEAUTIFUL DESIGN AND IMMERSIVE READING – COMING SEPTEMBER 16

KOBO AURA

Hot on the heels of the limited-edition Kobo Aura HD – which was touted the best eReader by Wired, Inc. Magazine and The Wall Street Journal – the new 6" Kobo Aura eReader is a beautifully designed, front-lit E Ink eReader.  Available in black and pink, the Kobo Aura features a high-resolution, edge-to-edge display and the most even front-lit ComfortLight technology, wrapped in a contemporary aesthetic to keep people passionate about reading books – day or night.

The sophisticated design of the eReader delivers the closest experience to print-on-paper with a 212 dpi and Pearl E Ink screen. With pinch-and-zoom capabilities for FLePubs/PDFs, Kobo Aura creates a great print-on-paper reading experience with a low-flash waveform screen to virtually eliminate page refresh and ghosting. Readers will never be at a loss for compelling reads with access to 4-million titles, curated Collections from Kobo, and the new Pocket partnership. With 4GB of storage (up to 3,000 books), expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card, Kobo Aura has a battery life of up to two months, making it perfect for passionate Readers. The Kobo Aura retails for $149.99 MSRP and is available in North America, Australia and New Zealand for pre-order at www.kobo.com.

THE BEST HIGH-DEFINITION TABLETS FOR READERS – COMING OCTOBER 16

KOBO ARC 10HD

Kobo Arc 10HD celebrates reading with Kobo's Reading Life platform, a compelling reading dashboard that is part of the user interface, with full access to the content people love to consume including books, magazines, news, and social media. With an NVIDIA® Tegra® 4 1.8GHz quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, the Kobo Arc 10HD tablet is the best 10-inch HD Google-certified multimedia tablet on the market today for Readers. The Kobo Arc 10HD tablet boasts a stunning 2560x1600 high-definition display with up to 1080p video playback, making it the perfect companion to enjoy the rich content from Kobo's bookstore like magazines, as well as the 1-million+ games and apps from the Google Play Store. The Kobo Arc 10HD tablet also includes a front-facing 1.3 MP HD camera, dual stereo speakers, WiFi 802.11, Bluetooth 4.0, and Miracast connectivity support for Wi Fi media streaming. With Reading Mode, the battery life is extended from 9.5 hours to more than 10 days. Available in black, the Kobo Arc 10HD retails for $399.99 MSRP.

KOBO ARC 7" TABLETS

The Kobo Arc 7HD tablet leverages the beautifully designed Reading Life platform that makes collecting, curating, and discovering content easier for Readers.

The Kobo Arc 7HD tablet is powered by the NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 1.7GHz quad-core processor and 1920x1200 display with up to 1080p video playback delivering a crisp, seamless viewing experience. The HD tablet has a 1GB of RAM, a front-facing 1.3 MP HD camera, and a battery that lasts up to 8 hours so readers are never at a loss for words. Available in black, the Kobo Arc 7HD retails for $199.99 MSRP with 16GB and $249.99 MSRP with 32GB.

For those Readers new to tablets, Kobo is offering the Kobo Arc 7, perfect for first-time users and families. With a 1024X600 display, MTK 8125 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM, the Kobo Arc 7 offers Readers a compact, multimedia tablet for reading and entertainment on the go. The Kobo Arc 7 retails for $149.99 MSRP with 8GB.

ABOUT READING LIFE

Kobo puts reading first and then takes you Beyond the Book with its enhanced Reading Life platform. Kobo's exclusive Reading Life user experience gives Readers access to all the content they love to consume, and allows them to customize based on their reading habits. On the new Kobo Arc series of tablets, the home screen showcases Readers' recent activity and personalized recommendations. A swipe to the left takes Readers into an uncompromised Android experience including access to the full Google Play Store. To the right of the home screen, Readers discover a personalized bookshelf where they can collect and organize eBooks, magazines, and other multimedia. To maximize the tablet experience for Readers, Kobo's Reading Mode provides settings to help eliminate distracting notifications from email and apps, adjust the lighting settings, and enhance battery life from hours to days.

On Kobo's new tablets and E Ink eReaders, Beyond the Book offers a way for passionate Readers to discover and engage with content by discovering books, Collections, and online material related to their latest reads and areas of interests. While reading a book, Readers can turn on this feature to discover content that is related to key subjects within the book. With Collections, Kobo opens the door to more reading material from across the web that is collected into themes like an author, genre, or topic of interest. Partnering with Pocket, the Read It Later feature allows Readers to save articles and other content from the Web, and seamlessly access it in the "Articles" section of their Kobo libraries. Reading Life also offers:

• The option of 11 fonts (including Dyslexie, designed for dyslexic Readers), and 24 font sizes
• Ability to take notes, highlight text, and make bookmarks
• Track reading with fun stats and awards, letting readers learn more about their reading habits
• Share favourite passages, quotes and books to Facebook Timeline

For more information, please visit www.kobo.com

About Kobo Inc.

Kobo Inc. is one of the world's fastest-growing eReading services offering more than 4-million eBooks, magazines and newspapers to millions of customers in 190 countries.  Believing that consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device, Kobo provides consumers with a choice when reading. Kobo offer an eReader for everyone with a wide variety of E Ink eReaders and Google-Certified Android tablets to suit any Reader's style including the award-winning Kobo Touch™, Kobo Mini, Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura, Kobo Aura HD, Kobo Arc, Kobo Arc 7, Kobo Arc 7HD, and Kobo Arc 10HD. Along with the company's free top-ranking eReading apps for Apple®, BlackBerry®, Android®, and Windows®, Kobo ensures the next great read is just a page-turn away. Headquartered in Toronto and owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten, Kobo eReaders can be found in major retail chains around the world. For more information, visit www.kobo.com.

For more information please contact:
Cerys Goodall
Sr. Director, Public Relations
cgoodall@Kobo.com
+1-647-282-1181