Bookeen Orizon 6" multi-touch e-book reader to ship to US, UK in May

Bookeen has announced the spring shipment of its e-book reader, the Orizon. However, for being a bare-bones device, it doesn't come with a reasonable price tag.

Ready to hit the US and UK this May, the Orizon e-reader features a six-inch display with a 800 x 600 resolution. It's multi-touch, but its in grayscale.

Other included features are 1 GB of memory, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and it will support PDF and ePUB formats. All of these assets are fairly standard nowadays.

But it's rumored that Bookeen is planning to sell these simple e-readers for $250, roughly the same as Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. But the Kindle has a bigger screen and a physical keyboard, while the Nook has 3G capability and more memory space.

$9 just isn't a big enough difference to justify buying a Orizon over one of these two more familiar name brands, even with multi-touch capabilities. Bookeen should consider either lowering the price or packing some more impressive features if its going to seriously compete in this budding industry.