In October 2009, Pandigital, as sponsored by Openmoko, came-out with
the WikiReader (Q2447967
on Wikidata), an offline, text-only version of
the English Wikipedia (along with Wiktionary,
Wikiquote, and Project Gutenberg). The device, which was essentially a
small white box that showed only text in black and white, was presumably
aimed at lower-income families in non-Western countries, along with
people who had no access to the Internet.
With the starting price of $99 (along with a twice-yearly offline update
service delivered via Micro SD card was also available at a cost of $29
per year, pretty much meaning that it would allow the end user to view
the latest version of Wikipedia at the time of publication), it could be
said that the WikiReader came-out too late, as two years prier in 2007,
Apple released their iPhone 1 with the slogan of «This is only the
beginning», and it certainly was, as more and more people would now be
able to have access to a smartphone that could also visit Wikipedia,
along with any other website that they desired, this was helped by the
fact that Internet access was growing fast.
Because more and more people would have a phone in their pocket, and also the price, plus the niche and quickly shrinking market, 2014 saw the end of the product, as the project itself was shut down and abandoned for unknown reasons. Existing WikiReaders no longer receive updates to their database, and the only way to get new updates is thanks to independent sellers who offer Micro SD cards with the latest version of Wikipedia - usually the Micro SD card can cost more than what the WikiReader is worth now (around $10).
This page was last edited on 2026-09-09 03:47:12.
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