The Aura HD is “only for those people who really, really care about reading in their lives,” Michael Tamblyn, the company’s EVP of content, sales and merchandising, told me. (Kobo’s marketing materials call it “the Porsche of e-readers.”) According to Kobo’s customer research, Tamblyn said, 90 percent of its e-reader users intend to purchase a new e-reader in the next year and “want to see what the next generation of e-ink looks like.” Thirty-six percent of Kobo e-reader customers, Tamblyn said, also own a tablet but “an e-ink device continues to be the primary way they do their reading.”

The Aura HD has a larger screen than most e-readers — 6.8 inches, compared to the standard six-inch screen. Like the Glo, it has a built-in light. The screen’s resolution is 265 DPI, which Kobo says is the highest resolution of any e-ink screen on the market. (Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite also has a high-resolution screen, but Amazon doesn’t state the number of pixels, saying only that it has “62 percent more” of them.) Storage is 4 GB and is expandable. The device is designed to be extra-comfortable to hold. Battery life is up to two months with the light on or off.

The Aura HD is available for preorder in North America at Kobo.com starting April 16, and will be available in stores in Canada and the U.K. on April 25. It should be in U.S. stores in May or June, though the company couldn’t get more specific than that. Kobo says it will announce international availability soon.

At $169, the Aura HD is more expensive than any of Kobo’s other e-readers and more expensive than the competition (the Wi-Fi Kindle Paperwhite is $119 with ads and $139 without; the Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light is $119.) The company will continue to focus on the $129.99 Kobo Glo as our “widest-adoption device,” Tamblyn said. But “for those readers who are most passionate about reading, they weren’t necessarily interested in finding the cheapest device possible…These are people buying hundreds of books every year and often reading several books a week. For those people, price is simply less important.”

To be sure, Barnes & Noble was first to launch a front-lit e-reader, the $139 Nook Touch with GlowLight, and until today it’s been the only front-lit e-reader on the market. Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble experienced “production scaling issues” that prevented it from fulfilling GlowLight orders for a few months. The Nook with GlowLight is back in stock now, but as of today it doesn’t matter since the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo have better displays.

Nook with GlowLight has a regular e-ink screen. When you hold it (without its light turned on) next to a Nook without a GlowLight, their screens look the same — grayish. Compare the Kindle Paperwhite to an earlier generation Kindle, though, and their screens don’t look the same. Amazon says the Paperwhite contains 62 percent more pixels and 25 percent increased contrast, and you can see that just by looking at it — even when the light isn’t on. (Update: Some commenters, using other photos online, say the Kindle Paperwhite does not have a brighter screen when the light is turned off. Holding my Kindle Touch up to the Paperwhite at the event, I could see a difference in resolution but should have been more hesitant to claim anything about the brightness of the screen with the light turned off. When we get a Paperwhite for review, I’ll have more pictures for you.) In other words, we’re not just getting a light here, we’re getting an improved display overall. The Kobo Glo has an XGA e-ink screen, which also means better resolution and contrast.

The biggest difference between the Kindle Paperwhite and the front-lit devices from Barnes & Noble and Kobo, though, is battery life. Jeff Bezos said during Thursday’s press conference that Amazon expects people to leave the light on all the time, even in bright rooms. While Barnes & Noble stressed the Nook with GlowLight’s use in bed, in a dark room, as your partner sleeps next to you, Bezos says Amazon “figured out early” that people want the light on by default. We’re used to staring at well-lit computer and tablet screens, after all. So the Kindle Paperwhite’s battery life is 8 weeks with the light on (based on half an hour of reading a day). Meanwhile, Nook with GlowLight’s battery life is a month with the light on (based on half an hour of reading a day) and two months with it off. Kobo’s is worse: A month with the light off, “up to 55 hours of continuous use” with the light on.

Finally, assuming that you’re okay with ads, Amazon beats the competition on price as well as other features. The Kindle Paperwhite WiFi is $119 with special offers, $139 without, and the Kindle Paperwhite 3G is $179 with Special Offers and $199 without. (Yes, $199 is a lot to pay for an e-reader. It’s as much as the newly announced 7-inch, 16 GB Kindle Fire HD.) Nook and Kobo don’t have ads, but the Kobo Glo is $129.99 and Nook with GlowLight is $139.

Overall, we saw today that e-readers can continue to improve even without adding more tablet-like features. The Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo are still single-function devices (Kindle’s “experimental browser” aside), but they’re substantially better than what was on the market before. That suggests we shouldn’t rule e-readers out, or assume that tablets are going to subsume them.

The Tablet: Kobo Arc, $199.99 8 GB/$249.99 16 GB

 The Arc is Kobo’s second attempt at a 7-inch Android tablet. The company released the $199.99 Vox last November, and while it got some decent reviews, there was little reason to buy it over competitors like Amazon’s Kindle Fire or Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. Hence the revamp, name change and price drop.

Specs: The Arc, which is $199.99 for the 8 GB model or $249.99 for the 16 GB version, runs on Android 4.0 and has a 1280×800 resolution 7-inch display, a front-facing camera, WiFi and 1 GB of RAM. No 3G, no GPS. . The Arc’s battery life is “up to 10 hours of continuous reading/video with WiFi off” and two weeks on standby.

Content: Kobo doesn’t have its own app store; it gives users access to apps and games through Google Play. The Arc’s main selling point appears to be an “exclusive interface” called “Tapestries,” which users “build” based on their interests and favorite content. The Kobo Arc “intelligently recommends new ebooks, videos, music and more based on the content you ‘pin’ to your Tapestry.” I haven’t seen a demo of how this works.

The Arc is preloaded with apps including Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Rdio, Zinio and PressReader, as well as Google apps. Users can download the Netflix Android app through the Google Play store.

Availability: The Arc will be available in the U.S. in November.

Bottom line: The Arc is a little pricier than the Nook Tablets (which are $179 for 8 GB version or $199 for 16 GB). We don’t know yet how the price compares to the Kindle Fire’s, since Amazon is launching a new version Thursday morning. I haven’t tested a Kobo Arc, but the specs alone don’t suggest a compelling reason to buy one. It’s not clear how the “Tapestries” feature will work but it seems unlikely that this alone is a reason to purchase the Arc – which lacks a native content store – over other seven-inch budget tablets like Google’s Nexus 7, a new version of the Kindle Fire, or the iPad Mini that Apple is rumored to release this fall.

The E-Readers: Kobo Glo, $129.99; Kobo Mini, $79.99

The front-lit Kobo Glo ComfortLight (at right) is Kobo’s answer to the Barnes & Noble Nook with GlowLight and the front-lit Kindle that Amazon is expected to release Thursday. The Kobo Mini, which has a 5-inch e-ink touchscreen, is a budget, lightweight e-reader.

Specs, Glo: The Glo has a 6-inch e-ink XGA touchscreen – which, unlike a standard Pearl e-ink screen, offers high resolution and brightness controls. It has WiFi and 1 GB of usable storage space, enough to store about 1,000 ebooks, with the option to expand to 32GB with a micro SD card. Battery life is “over one month with WiFi and light turned off” and “over 55 hours of continuous use with light on,” although that’s all  ”pending testing.”

Specs, Mini: The Mini has a 5-inch e-ink touchscreen and weighs 4.7 ounces, which Kobo says makes it the “smallest, lightest ultra-thin e-reader on the market.” It has WiFi and 1 GB of storage of non-expandable, usable storage space, enough to store about 1,000 ebooks.  Battery life is “over two weeks with WiFi off.”

Content: Kobo says its digital bookstore contains nearly three million books,newspapers and magazines. Unlike Kindle, Kobo supports EPUB and Adobe DRM. Users can share notes and quotes to Facebook and Twitter and track and share what they’re reading with Kobo’s social reading service Reading Life.

Availability: The e-readers will be available in the U.S. in October.

Bottom line: A front-lit screen is quickly becoming a must-have on e-readers, with Amazon expected to release a front-lit Kindle on Thursday. Putting aside leaks about that Kindle, we can compare the Kobo Glo to Barnes & Noble’s Nook GlowLight: The Glo is $10 cheaper and has a better screen.

The Mini’s screen is an inch smaller than that of competing e-readers, but it’s unclear whether customers will actually think that’s a plus since e-readers aren’t that bulky in the first place. At $79.99, the Mini’s price is in line with the cheapest, ad-supported Kindle (unless Amazon announces price drops) and $20 cheaper than the basic Nook – and unlike the basic Kindle, it has a touchscreen.

*Nook revenue is comprised of Nook devices, digital content and accessories.

A holiday sales spike following the launch of the Nook Tablet in November 2011 hasn’t been enough to sustain the Nook business. And despite the launch of the front-lit Nook e-reader in April 2012, Nook business revenues are flat compared to this time last year.**

Microsoft is investing $300 million to spin off Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses into a new company. But these revenue figures suggest that’s a bad bet. (Note: Amazon doesn’t release Kindle revenue figures at all. Its ebook market share is higher than Nook’s, but we don’t know how Kindle revenues compare, though here’s our best guess. B&N’s relative openness makes it easier to write a post like this about the Nook business. Amazon offers a lot less to go on.)

E-reader problems

Barnes & Noble has had particular trouble with e-ink devices. The Nook Simple Touch e-reader (without GlowLight) had such poor holiday sales that B&N downgraded its full-year guidance. And in Tuesday’s earnings report, Barnes & Noble said that “production scaling issues” prevented it from filling orders for the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. That was a “missed opportunity,” CEO William Lynch acknowledged in an investor call following the report.

Nook with GlowLight may have great reviews from Consumer Reports and tech blogs and B&N may have beat Amazon (AMZN) in the launch of a front-lit e-reader. But that doesn’t matter if people can’t actually get their hands on one. Amazon is widely expected to release its front-lit Kindle this fall, and it appears B&N has already squandered its first-mover advantage.

Falling prices

Barnes & Noble also attributes falling Nook device revenues to price cuts. But the company is going to have to keep dropping prices on its e-readers and tablets to stay in line with Kindle and with budget tablets like Google’s Nexus 7 and the anticipated iPad Mini. It can’t increase prices to increase revenues.

International delays

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft are hoping to find salvation overseas. The Nook will launch in the U.K. this fall — first through an online storefront, nook.co.uk, though B&N promises that well-known retail partners will be announced soon. And Microsoft will spend $25 million a year for five years on international launches. But Kindle has already been in the U.K. for two years and recently partnered with British bookstore chain Waterstone’s to sell Kindles in its stores. Rakuten’s Kobo is already in the U.K., too, and both companies are expanding rapidly to other countries. Microsoft’s $25 million payments could help B&N catch up, but it is already far behind.

Slowing ebook sales

In Tuesday’s earnings call, B&N’s Lynch said apps and digital newsstand sales growth is “a little higher” than ebook growth. Lynch noted that book publishers are also seeing slower ebook sales (and here are Publishers Lunch’s recent findings on that). Nook’s ebook market share is still between 25 and 30 percent, the same as it was a year ago. It’s nice if apps and newsstand can drive some sales. But Barnes & Noble is going to have an even tougher time competing on those products than it does on ebooks. Apple and Android have the app market cornered, and digital magazines make up just a tiny sliver of overall magazine sales.

Resources

Barnes & Noble Q1 2013 earnings report (our post here)

Earnings call transcript

An earlier version of this article stated that Barnes & Noble’s app and digital newsstand *sales* are higher than ebook sales. That is incorrect and I apologize for the error. Lynch was referring to the growth rate, not overall sales numbers.

** Or they’re down: The Digital Reader points out that Barnes & Noble previously reported Nook sales of $277 million for the period ending July 30, 2011, but now says they were $191.4 million. A Barnes & Noble spokesperson said the discrepancy is due to accounting for agency pricing and the $191.4 million reflects the actual selling price of ebooks.

I’ve seen Facebook sharing of digital content from an e-reader in the past, but as an Evernote user, this feature intrigues me:

“For the first time, Reader is combining features from Evernote to allow users to save their favorite web content to enjoy any time. Evernote’s Web Clipper allows saving content with a click, and pages saved with Evernote Clearly are optimized for Reader’s crisp E-Ink display. Favorite passages can also be annotated on Reader and saved back to Evernote for viewing later on any smartphone, tablet or PC.”

Adding Evernote support is a smart move by Sony and I anticipate others — namely, Amazon and Barnes & Noble — to follow with expanded sharing or web clipping options. Moving content to the cloud for later consumption on nearly any device is just one of the benefits brought by Evernote and it makes sense: Why read a long web page on a device that’s not optimized for the activity when you can clip it and read later on a better display? Likewise, the reverse option is appealing: I often use Evernote Clearly to clip the text of web pages and could use the new Sony Reader to view them later.

With the PRS-T2, Sony is also throwing in a free voucher for an e-book copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone through a partnership with Pottermore, making the Potter pot, that much sweeter for its new Reader.

I owned several Pocket PC devices, as well as the later Windows Mobile ones that followed, and I recall reading hundreds of titles on my handhelds long before modern e-book readers arrived. Microsoft developed its own format called .LIT, which was a HTML-based format similar to that used for Microsoft Windows Help files. And like most of the e-books sold today, Microsoft allowed for DRM, or Digital Rights Management, for device registration — sometimes problematic — and content protection.

Microsoft eventually offered its Microsoft Reader application for its desktop operating systems, starting with Windows 95 support later in 2000. Eventually, all Windows versions save Windows 7 gained the e-reader application. Another fond memory of my Microsoft e-reader experience comes from the Windows Tablet Edition platform: Using a convertible notebook with digital pen support, I could read on a larger screen and take notes. Sound familiar?

Microsoft eventually got out of the Reader business in August of last year, with the decision to shutter its Reader efforts. And why not when the software was then losing to dedicated e-Ink devices and smaller tablets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others?

Clearly, the PC route as an e-book strategy has limited upside compared to more pocketable devices such as Kindles, Nooks and smartphones. Just as books are meant to be carried and read, reading on a portable screen is the e-book recipe for success today. One legacy feature of Reader, however, still remains as part of Windows: ClearType. The display function that can add clarity through software (via sub-pixel rendering) debuted in the Reader software and later migrated to Microsoft Windows.

The details on how Microsoft’s new partnership with Barnes & Noble may be sketchy just yet, but Microsoft has a clear history in this space, with a dozen years of experience. Again, the ideas Microsoft had with its Reader platform were solid, but the market for e-books didn’t arrive for mainstream consumers until much later. Perhaps the company can take a page out of its history and gain back some of the e-book momentum it lost in the last decade.

We’ll be talking with leaders in tech, media and investing about how to make the most of today’s opportunities, blurred lines and all, at paidContent 2012: At The Crossroads, May 23, at The TimesCenter in New York. Join us.

Thumbnail image courtesy of SocialTimes

It will be introduced at the Demo conference tomorrow, reports NYT. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents. Like Kindle and Sony Reader, it uses a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E-Ink. This first display weighs just two ounces more than Kindle, and is about one-third the Kindle