TOKYO—During a business trip to Japan in 2004, technology analyst Michael Gartenberg caught a glimpse of Sony Corp.'s Librie, the first e-book reader with an electronic ink display.

Mr. Gartenberg was impressed. He saw it as a harbinger of a new wave of products that would hit the U.S. But there were problems. The software was in Japanese. It required a computer to download a book and selection was limited.

Today,...