A year ago we wondered whether Philips’s iRex Reader might be a Kindle killer. The question has resurfaced with a vengeance with the announcement that Best Buy will begin selling the new $399 8.1-inch touchscreen iRex reader.

And Verizon will provide wireless delivery of iRex’s e-books and newspapers in direct competition with Amazon’s Kindle DX (10 inch screen, $499) and and Sony’s Reader Daily Edition (7-inch screen, $399). The New York Times‘s Brad Stone says that “Best Buy is training thousands of its employees in how to talk about and demonstrate devices like the Sony Reader and iRex, and adding a new area to its 1,048 stores to showcase the devices.”

Though the iRex is far less familiar to Americans than it is to Europeans, Stone points out two significant advantages for the Dutch device. The first is that iRex accepts the ePub file format, a universal, open e-book industry standard that allows users to download e-books from a variety of retailers, as opposed to Kindle’s closed, proprietary system that directs buyers to amazon.com and amazon.com only.

The other, and in our opinion far more significant, feature is color. The advantage of a color newspaper and e-book reader is incalculable. Stone thinks that IRex is “on track to have a color version of the device by 2011, something that other vendors, which rely on technology from eInk, a subsidiary of Prime View International of Taiwan, say is years away.”

With Stone citing market research projecting a 4 million unit increase in e-reader sales in 2009, the race for dominance in the marketplace is about to grow cutthroat. Don’t forget that Plastic Logic’s no-name device (which we’ve dubbed the “Teasle”) will soon be sprung on the world. And lurking in the shadows is a possible wild card: the Apple Tablet.

Here’s Stone’s article in full: Best Buy and Verizon Jump Into E-Reader Fray.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.