About Us

As a key for understanding the QuokkaPad, and in the belief that information is paramount to good customer relations, we have included below a comprehensive overview to potential users and future customers.

The QuokkaPad team is based in Adelaide, South Australia where the decision to build our own e-Reading device was prompted by the lack of suitable alternatives. It was not a direction we had initially envisaged but one that occurred through the force-of-circumstance. By way of background, the QuokkaPad has a long pedigree with our journey starting in 1999. The path to production has taken us longer than expected and involved false starts, backtracking and (many) bruises.  We have also in the process recast ourselves from distributor to developer. Nevertheless, overcoming obstacles is a good teacher and we now know more about the sort of things that you shouldn’t do and more importantly should do when building an e-Reading device.

Almost since inception, our team has been connected one way or another with eBook-related industries. We consider ourselves pioneers. The founders of Ubiq Technologies were the Australian distributors in the late 90’s of e-Reading devices such as SoftBook Press’s SoftBook and the Korean Hiebook. At that time we were also a ‘laboratory’ for these and other manufacturers. This included source code modification, trialling business solutions, undertaking research in the field and guiding hardware development. For example, if you ever wondered who were among the first to trial e-Reading devices in the corporate world then think about us. It was with the blessing of SoftBook Press, and in conjunction with Ansett Airlines, that we proposed the SoftBook as a platform for porting engineering and flight manuals. Ansett estimated that adopting this proposal would save them 19 million dollars a year in 2001.  Unfortunately this project never reached fruition with Ansett going into receivership. That experience, however, convinced us that a large screen device such as the QuokkaPad which can store and display documents for the mobile workforce remains a sound idea and one we have continued to pursue. In sum, we have had more than a decade of experience with and thinking about e-Reading devices, eBooks, markets and futures. The QuokkaPad may be a recent entry into the market, but its conception is not.

Out of interest, the ‘QuokkaPad’ is named after the quokka, a small marsupial largely confined to a few sites in Western Australia. The name was chosen because it is Australian, distinctive and easy to Google.

It is anticipated within the next decade that the eBook/e-Reader market will become a multi-billion dollar industry. In the US alone, the market doubled in 2010 with an estimated $500 million in revenue. Similar to any emerging industry, the eBook/e-Reader industry is still evolving with varied and hybrid products on offer and in development. In the bigger picture we fit into that trajectory, but we believe our long experience places us somewhat to one side of our competitors. In particular, we have pursued a path that has led to open source (software and hardware), a focus on corporate as well as retail markets and an application rich platform. 

To exemplify the QuokkaPad we have adopted the phrase “Comfort, Reliability and Fidelity”. These words highlight what ten years of research has shown us to be the most important factors when designing an e-Reading device for serious readers and corporate workers alike.

When considering an e-Reading device the most important aspect is comfort. In collaboration with universities and schools we have spent more than a decade researching eBooks. Our most important insight has come from trying to understand why people prefer reading on paper rather than from a screen. We believe it quite simply comes down to posture (and incidentally not because people are reading from a screen or that they are used to reading from paper). It may seem self-evident but an individual’s posture is very different when reading a print book compared to a desktop/laptop screen. We have been able to demonstrate that if an e-Reading device is similar in size to a print book, fashioned so that it can be comfortably held and navigated and, importantly, can be read using the same posture as a print book then the reader will very quickly accept the device as BEING a book. Our results have shown that reading speed and retention are identical to that of a print book. Moreover, e- Reading can be sustained over long periods and may even become the preferred mode of reading.

Our research into e-Reading devices has also revealed the importance to users of reliability. This includes not only the dependability of the hardware and software but also meeting expectations regarding functionality. For example, if I need more storage then I shouldn’t have to purchase a new device just to gain that extra storage; likewise if I want to add new features to the device, such as 3G/4G connectivity, then I should be able to do this easily and simply; if my battery is flat then I should be able to quickly replace it and thereby continue reading with minimal disruption; also if my battery fails and needs replacing then I should be able to do this without fuss (one of the most common complaints with many current e-Reading devices is that battery failure entails having to return the device to the manufacturer for an expensive replacement); and so on.

The final factor identified by users as important when designing an e-Reading device is fidelity. The Universal Interoperability Council define fidelity as: “A key measure of interoperability and compatibility, the quality of document content, presentation and metadata preserved on exchange between applications.”

In designing the QuokkaPad as an open platform we have made every effort to ensure not just interoperability and compatibility but also that documents retain their original published quality. In the case of PDF documents this is made possible by including a native PDF-Viewer rather than relying on conversion software with its many limitations. In the case of eBooks, such as with the popular ePub format, the QuokkaPad has been configured so that font size (and page layout, font colour and font type) can be adjusted according to the user’s preference while still maintaining the pagination and integrity of the text. As such, the font size can be changed without affecting either the reading experience or text flow. We have also developed a unique reader interface that allows with one touch of a button for the text to be displayed in full-screen mode without any screen icons, thus producing an uncluttered page that more closely reproduces the print reading experience.