In a news article posted on Reuters today, it seems as if Rupert Murdoch is to hold back with the development of a competative ebook reader to take on the Amazon Kindle. Murdoch said that it would be unlikely for Newscorp to launch their own reading device.

Murdoch continued, “we’re looking and talking to a lot of laboratories and big companies around the world, like Sony and Samsung. We’re all working on wireless readers for books or newspapers or for magazines.  I think they’re a year or two away being marketed in a mass way, high quality ones, and we’ll be absolutely neutral. We’re happy to have our products distributed over any device provided it’s only going to subscribers paying for it.” 

The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and London Times amongst others, are now selling subscriptions through the popular Amazon Kindle in the US. However, Murdoch has spoken out about his disapproval of Amazon’s model. The media mogal does recognise that the newspaper industry is heading towards a era where the decline of paper based, advertising centric offering will be displaced by a rapid uptake of subscription based digital media technology. Whilst it’s clear that NewsCorp are planning on getting their content onto a range of e-reading devices in the near future, there are other plans afoot that “they’re not ready to disclose yet”.