Sure, today’s conference is slightly, well, definitively disappointing for the geek in us, and when we received an invitation from Sharp to talk about e-Books we were expecting to see Sharp’s answer to Apple, with an iPad killer, nope nothing of such today, so move along boys, since Sharp new big e-Book thingy is their latest e-Book platform and e-Book format called here XMDF or ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format. Sure XMDF is not something that Sharp came with all alone and but let’s say that Sharp is here developing its own format based on XMDF. Sharp in fact start to work actively on this technology since 2009, and today’s press conference is the result of this work.

Already used in over 70 Million terminals, mainly on mobile phones, XMDF became Japanese favorite technology for publish e-Books, and today’s Sharp Next Gen XMDF promise much more than what we are use to see here.

Simply put, the point here is to be capable to offer e-Books, every kind of e-Books like simple stuff you can find on a Kindle to a fully featured book experience with Video or Audio, style effects and so on not only to phones, iPad like devices, but also to a wider range of products including TVs, Set Top Box, Gaming devices either mobile or not. So basically you cloud read your regular Newspaper that will not only embedded text or picture, but also On Demand video or audio files, as well as live TV. This technology is of course not only available for e-Book like “books” but can also be applied and added to website to further enhanced user experience.

Also this technology is also a major step forward to publisher, since Sharp worked hard to simplified the distribution and collection of data.

Now the good news is that Sharp will actively work on the US market with for example Verizon who will later proposer not only Sharp e-Book platform but also Sharp e-Book readers, than can be see here as prototypes. Sharp is planning later this year another press conference focusing on these 2 new e-Book readers with a 5.5″ model and 10.8″… So stay tune!