Kindle is holiday e-book king after Sony and Nook hit snags

This is turning into the season of the new e-book readers that never were—and, by default, the season of the Amazon Kindle, the sales leader that no-shows like the Barnes and Noble Nook and Sony Daily Edition were supposed to challenge.

To be fair, the Nook did appear briefly, but has now sold out for the holiday season, before the first orders have even shipped. If ordered now, according to Barnes and Noble's Web site, a Nook would reach you or your gift recipient early in the new year—on January 4, to be precise.

The Daily Edition, Sony's first e-book reader with wireless access to content, remains available. But it will ship "on or about December 18," according to Sony's online store today. ChannelWeb quotes a Sony spokesman as saying there's "no guarantee" that orders will arrive by December 25.

Two other would-be Kindle killers—wireless e-book readers priced at below $400—are also no-shows, at least so far. The iRex DR800SG, originally promised for late October or early November, has yet to appear. And there's no sign, either, of the Alex, which will boast a second, color LCD screen like the Nook. The Web site for its manufacturer says the device is "coming and the latest news about it is the October 19 release announcing the device would be sold through "selected strategic partners" by "the end of this year."

Sony has two other e-book readers still on the market. But both the Sony Pocket, $199, and the Sony Touch, $299, lack the wireless access to content that distinguishes virtually all other models now on the market; you need to install software on a computer and connect the device to it to update content.

The Kindle line has been tweaked to only two models. The smaller of them, priced at $259, is now called the Kindle (Global Wireless); formerly, there was the KIndle 2, $259, and its global version, the Kindle with U.S. and International Wireless, $279. Then there's the jumbo-sized (and jumbo-priced) Kindle DX (US Wireless), $489, which works only within the United States, as the name implies.  —Paul Reynolds