Rupert Murdoch reveals Color Kindle-rival investment

Rupert Murdoch is apparently investing in a potential Amazon Kindle rival which would have a larger, four-color capable display. The News Corp. CEO revealed the plans at a Q&A while at the cable industry’s annual show this week, mentioning no specific companies but leading to speculation that the company is planning to take their print model into the ebook world.

That leaves uncertainty as to which company Murdoch is dealing with. The commonly-known players in ebook readers – Plastic Logic and Hearst – both have monochrome models in the pipeline, but the only commercially available color ebook reader is from Fujitsu.

That, however, has a 260,000 color display, rather than the rather more mundane four-color display Murdoch suggests. However, the CEO’s background in print may be leading us all astray: by four-color he might not mean a literal number of distinct colors but the four-color printing process used in color newspapers. That is, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, mixed together to produce any other shade. If that’s the case, we could be talking about a full-color epaper device as several e-ink companies have promised.