Are e-books mainstream? Despite a small commercial market I think so and so does consumer electronics giant Sony. According to today’s top story in BusinessWeek the company will announce an e-book reader at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. BW wonders, “Can Sony make the iPod of digital books?”

“With everyone from Google to Microsoft to HarperCollins digitizing books, plus the arrival of slick new display technology, Sony figures the time is right for a handheld e-reader in the U.S.,” BusinessWeek says. Since I’ve written about how a Nokia 770 can replace a dedicated e-book reader, this has repercussions for the 770 market I think.

BW compares Sony’s approach to Apple’s iPod/iTune combo because the company will also set up an online store to sell books from major publishers Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, who have committed to offer tens of thousands of current and backlist titles. (Having worked at Random House and for Simon & Schuster, I can report their efforts at electronifying the books they publish has been going on for six years or longer. There will be plenty of good books for sale.)

Sony’s E Ink-based device will sell for $300 to $500, a price BW compares to a full-size iPod and which I compare to the color-screen Nokia 770. The company’s reluctant nods to openness are to include a PDF reader and to accept standard SD memory cards in addition to its proprietary memory sticks.

The article notes some difficulties — the small commercial market currently, Sony’s “string of recent misses” in digital media, and customer discouragement with the high price and loutish antipiracy technology of Sony’s Japan-only Librie e-book reader. But the big worry according to BusinessWeek is the onslaught of competitors preparing to release their own devices with similar or superior capabilities. At least four additional devices will soon come on the market.

As the company’s rationale, BW quotes JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg, who says “e-books are an untapped market” that can be compared to the online music market four years, before Apple changed the music business.

Companies expert in this gadget-size space seem already to be keenly aware of Gartenberg’s point, I would say, pointing to the recent announcement by Nokia about e-books on smartphones as evidence. And also to posts in this blog about the solid user interest in e-books and how well FBReader-on-the-Nokia 770 performs as an e-book reader.

To quote myself, the lassitude we see today in the e-book market is not for want of demand or desire. I think the fact that Sony and four other companies are introducing these specialized devices — they’re not made to surf the web, or play games, or run a word processor, or watch video, or play music, etc. — is confirmation of this unmet demand.

The books sold for Sony’s proprietary e-book reader won’t be able to be read on any other device. Sony will be chopping the price of the new device to half what its Librie is now, yet it will still cost as much or more than a 770 and won’t have any color. Nor can it be used for anything other than reading books. There’s a market for that, likely enough a huge one, but I bet a device that could surf the web AND read books would appeal to even more people. You know, like the 770. And did I mention the 770’s color screen?

The 770 can do more and has greater appeal. And that’s why I say Nokia should include FBReader in its next release and encourage other e-book readers — eReader, Mobipocket, Adobe Reader — to be ported to the 770, so when the e-book market rockets into the stratosphere, the 770 will go along for the ride.