WHSmith is bringing Kobo’s 7″ colour eReading tablet to the UK as part of its exclusive retail tie-up with Kobo.
The Vox features a touchscreen, WiFi, the ability to play games, listen to music and watch videos and web access.
In October WHSmith announced plans to move its entire ebook service to the Canadian-based Kobo service.
Just weeks later it was announced Kobo’s shareholders had agreed to sell the company to Japanese ecommerce specialists Rakuten in a $315 million deal.
The Vox is already available in WhSmith stores, allowing Kobo to cash-in on the Christmas buying season. Amazon’s Kindle Fire is not yet available in the UK.
Michael Serbinis, CEO, Kobo Inc. comments: “With the combination of a beautiful product, incredible video and audio functionality and now with the advent of social reading, the Kobo Vox is unlike any eReading product available in the UK today.
“As part of our mission to inspire people to spend more time reading, we’ve made reading with Vox a truly social experience – we’re excited Kobo is the first eReading platform to be integrated with Facebook Ticker and Timeline, to enable further reading discovery and entertainment enabling us to take eReading to the next level.”
Rachel Russell, Business Unit Director, Books, WHSmith said: “We’re really pleased with the way customers have responded to the Kobo eReaders and accessories in our stores and we’re delighted to be the first UK retailer to offer customers a product as innovative as the new Kobo Vox”.
Kobo recently released a software update for the Vox eBook which fixes an issue that prevented screens from turning back on after the reader went to sleep.
