Sunday, August 08, 2010

iRex is back as IRX, will fail again

iRex Technologies, a bankrupt vendor of overpriced eBook readers, has arisen from the dead, stripped the "e" from its name to become IRX Innovations, and plans to get back into the eBook reader game, this time selling overpriced eBook readers to the business and enterprise market. (That was Plastic Logic's business model, and we've seen where that got them.)

iRex (or IRX) is following a time-tested strategy--if you try to sell your offering to the business-to-consumer market and fail, switch to a business-to-business "white label" strategy and try again. The problem with this approach is that businesses aren't stupid; they see perfectly good eBook readers from Amazon selling for $139 and wonder, rightfully, why they should pay more than that. If IRX prices their readers closer to the iPad, they'll lose. So, I don't see what IRX is going to bring to the market that will allow it to survive in the "valley of death" between the Kindle at the low end and the iPad at the high end.
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