Publishers Weekly reports that Fujitsu has now weighed into the e-book arena with the Flepia. We say “weighed” but it doesn’t weigh much: it’s Kindle-slim and less than one pound. Far more importantly, its e-ink no-glare screen is in robust color. Its battery holds a charge for forty hours and, says PW’s Michael Fitzpatrick, “When used with a 4GB SD card, the color e-paper terminal can store the equivalent of 5,000 conventional paper based, 300-pages-long books.”

E-Reads’ Michael Gaudet previewed the Flepia in fall of 2007 and expressed some concerns about the device’s speed and performance. We’ll see if those criticisms have been addressed.

He also worried that technology would come with a high retail price. He was sure right about that – when it comes to the US this fall or sometime in 2010 (Japanese consumers will have theirs in April ‘09), it will have a price tag of around $1000.00. You did say you wanted color, didn’t you? How badly? A thousand bucks badly? With the e-reader bar currently holding at around $350.00, that’s asking a lot in this or any other economy, even if you’re an AIG executive suddenly flush with discretionary income.

But, like your grandpa’s Dumont TV, once people have seen color it’s going to be very hard to go back to black and white, so a second generation e-reader arms race revolving around color screens may be shaping up.

And we’re told it’s pronounced FLEHP-ya, not FLEEP-ya.

White gloves not included in the price, but for a thousand bucks, heaven help you if you leave a thumb-print on the screen.

RC