Stylish, New Kobo eReader Touch Edition is Available in Canada and U.S. for Father's Day and Graduation

TORONTO, June 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Kobo, a global leader in eReading with 3.6 million users in more than 100 countries worldwide, today announced that the new Kobo eReader Touch Edition is available in stores and online at leading retailers including Indigo (www.indigo.ca), Best Buy (www.bestbuy.ca), Walmart (www.walmart.ca) and Borders (www.borders.com) with a MSRP of $129.99 USD and $139.99 CDN. In stores now for Father's Day and graduation gifting, the Kobo Touch Edition is the perfect gift for dads, grads and those looking for summer reading fun. Kobo also offers a Father's Day Gift Guide with other great gifting ideas at www.kobo.com/giftguide.

Beautiful New Design

The Kobo eReader Touch Edition offers a beautiful new design that provides the ultimate in reading comfort. Small and lightweight, it fits easily in a purse or jacket pocket for easy travel anywhere. The new Kobo eReader Touch Edition comes in selection of stylish colors; black, lilac, blue and silver – there is a color to suit everyone. A single, sleek home button allows for a clean design, free of buttons for a pure reading experience – books don't have keyboards neither should an eReader.

Amazing New Touch Experience

Now with Infrared Touch Technology, eReading is easy, with the new touchscreen users can simply tap or swipe to turn the page, just like reading a real book. Kobo's eReader Touch Edition offers a revolutionary new flicker-free touch screen experience, featuring the newest E Ink technology that is just like reading print on paper – glare-free and easy to read in bright sunlight. With an extended one-month battery life* and 2GB of onboard storage for 1,000 books** (expandable to 30,000 by adding a SD card), a user can carry access their entire library anytime, anyplace.

Kobo eReader Touch Edition features include:

• Beautiful, new contemporary design
• The latest Pearl 6" E Ink screen
• Slimmer, lighter, and smaller – for easy travel
• A single home button that eliminates clutter so you can focus on reading
• Flicker-free page turns - enhanced technology enables flicker-free page turns for an uninterrupted reading experience
• Easy-to-use and the ultimate in comfort – read for hours without strain
• High performance engine for ultra-fast page turning, low power consumption
• Long battery life that delivers a month of reading on a single charge
• Real Touch™ experience – use zForce™ infrared touch technology for tap/swipe Page turns, long press highlights and look up, zoom and rotate
• Intuitive browsing experience – navigate quickly through entire chapters or your entire library
• Customizable fonts – two font styles and 12 font sizes
• Build your shortlist - quickly create shortcut to favorite books or current reads
• Easily highlight passages within a book
• Read PDFs - Download, access and read personal and professional documents. Zoom in and magnify images, drag your finger to explore the page. Double tap to fast zoom 200%
• Access more than 2.3 million eBook titles wirelessly or through USB connection
• Browse, buy and download eBooks in minutes with a few quick taps
• Read almost any format - supports the most content of any eReader
• Get started reading quickly with 15 free hand-picked previews of the hottest new books
• Get free, two-week trials of the most popular newspapers and magazines
• Supported file formats include: Books: EPUB, PDF and MOBI; Documents: PDF;
  Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF; Text: TXT, HTML and RTF; Comic Books: CBZ and CBR
• Kobo offers 1 million FREE titles
• Borrow and read eBooks for your local public library
• Read across devices and pick up from the last page read with Kobo's synched bookmark technology

Earn Awards Just for Reading – with Reading Life

In addition, the new Kobo Touch Edition also includes Reading Life, Kobo's social experience that lets users earn awards – and soon rewards – just for reading. Reading Life also allows users to discover their own reading stats, tracking pages read, minutes per reading session and an overview of completed books in their library. With Reading Life, readers can sync Android-enabled phones, iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches to experience Reading Life across devices.

The First International eReader

The Kobo eReader Touch will be the first eReader to be available in multiple languages and will offer a completely local experience, including content, recommendations and the Kobo store. Currently available in English, with French, German, Spanish, and Italian coming soon.

For more information visit www.kobo.com/touch. Full Kobo eReader Touch Edition technical specifications are available at www.kobo.com/touch_tech.

About Kobo, Inc.

Kobo is a global eReading service with more than 2.3 million eBooks, magazines and newspapers – one of the largest eReading catalogues in the world. Kobo believes consumers should have the freedom to read any book on any device and has attracted millions of readers from over 100 countries across the globe. Kobo has top ranked eReading applications for iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows and MacOS, and is the eReading application of choice for leading tablets. The Kobo eReader is also available at leading retailers including Indigo, Walmart, Best Buy, Borders, WHSmith, Angus & Robertson's and Whitcoull's. Kobo's innovative Reading Life is an industry-first comprehensive social eReading experience – Kobo users can earn awards simply for time spent reading and encouraging others to read. Kobo is backed by majority shareholder Indigo Books & Music Inc, Cheung Kong Holdings, and institutional investors. For more information, please visit www.Kobo.com

* Battery life is dependent on individual usage. Actual results may vary.

** 1GB is available to store content (more than 1,000 eBooks).

SOURCE Kobo