Sony to offer Wall Street Journal, New York Post on e-reader

(Sony)

Japan's Sony Corp., seeking to gain ground on Amazon's popular Kindle, said Thursday that it will begin offering The Wall Street Journal and New York Post on its Daily Edition electronic reader.

Sony said the digital version of the New York Post, the tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and Marketwatch.com, a News Corp.-owned online financial news service, will be exclusive to the Sony device.

The Wall Street Journal, also owned by News Corp., is already available on the Kindle, which has come in for criticism from News Corp. chairman Murdoch.

Sony said a service called Wall Street Journal Plus - a daily news update after the close of markets - would be exclusive to the Sony Reader, however.

Subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal digital edition will cost 14.99 dollars a month, Sony said. The daily news update is available for an extra five dollars a month.

A subscription to MarketWatch will cost 10.99 dollars a month while the New York Post will cost 9.99 dollars a month.

Sony said the Wall Street Journal digital edition and MarketWatch Today will be available in the next few days while the New York Post will be available in January.

Sony and Amazon are leading players in the growing e-reader market.

Forrester Research, Inc. estimates that three million e-readers will be sold in the United States this year with 900,000 units sold in the upcoming holiday season alone.

Forrester expects e-reader sales to double to six million units next year, bringing cumulative sales to 10 million units.

Amazon does not release Kindle sales figures but Forrester estimates the online retail giant has a nearly 60 percent share of the US market followed by the Sony Reader with 35 percent.

Other players have also plunged into the market recently including bookstore giant Barnes and Noble, which is selling its own reader called the "Nook."