Hot on the heels of of the Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony has decided to drop the price of its eReaders to the following:

• Reader Pocket Edition is now $150 (from $170)

• Touch Edition Reader is now $170 (from $200)

• 3G Daily Edition Sony Reader is now $300 (from $350)

Of course, all 3 companies were comfortable with the prices they were offering prior to these last few weeks of price drops until Apple introduced the iPad. It does seem silly to buy a Kindle prior to these price drops for a little over $400 when the iPad is priced at $499 and can do everything the Kindle can do and more, and do them better. Of course, Sony has never positioned the eReader to compete with the iPad but I do wonder if these moves are enough. Currently, when I hear everyday people (and that’s really where the sales matter, not the techy online world) speak about readers, it’s either the Kindle or slowly the Nook. Not once do I hear people mention the eReader. A big part of this is of course presence. Amazon has a huge online store and the Kindle is always on page one, followed by the occasional TV commercial. Barnes and Noble of course was the young gun to challenge the Kindle so that made headlines and they of course have their bookstores to display the Nook.

This again leaves Sony in an awkward place. They were really the first to the eReader market and now seem the most dead in that market. The same thing happened to them with the MP3 market and the cellphone market. It also started to happen to the Playstation brand but Sony has been doing a fantastic job the last 1 1/2 years with bringing the brand back from 3rd place. The way I see it is that Sony needs to do two things. First, advertisement and partnerships. Content is key and Sony’s eReader has a great selection, but that’s pointless if nobody knows your product is out there. With that idea, Sony needs to be aggressive, drop the price of the basic eReader to the magical $99, talk it over with Wal-Mart and Target and make sure there is one at the end of their book or tech isle. This market is only going to heat up as Apple eats away into everybody else’s market share and somebody will get to that magical $99 price tag. Might as well be Sony and with that, they can start to take market shares while they come up with a better competitor to the Kindle and Nook.