Just the other day, I reported how the Kobo Clara BW has undergone a hardware refresh. It now sports a 2000 mAh battery compared to the 1500 mAh battery the e-reader came with when it was originally launched in April 2024. Now, new details have emerged courtesy of the e-Book Reader Blog, which reported that something more has happened behind the scenes than just a battery bump for the Clara BW.
Citing a post on the MobileRead forum, the e-Book Reader Blog said Kobo has opted for a different Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to get its Clara BW assembled. This makes for a tectonic shift from the Taiwan-based OEM Netronix that has been manufacturing all Kobo e-readers right from when the first Kobo e-reader was introduced back in 2009. The first Kobo e-reader happens to be a rebranded Netronix EB-600.
Instead, the Kobo Clara BW, introduced around April this year, has been manufactured by Top Victory Electronics, which is another Taiwan-based OEM but relatively new. TPV seems to have started operations sometime early 2000s. An FCC listing reveals TPV as the manufacturer of the new Clara BW, which is identified as the P365 model. The original Kobo Clara BW, manufactured by Netronix, has the model number starting with N365.
However, what is unknown at the moment is whether TPV is limited to manufacturing only the Clara BW or if it is the OEM of choice for all Kobo models going forward. If that is the case, then what is pretty much sure is that Kobo has no other devices lined up for launch this year. This is evident from the lack of any new listings on the TPV FCC page. The same applies to the Netronix FCC page as well, which means no new Kobo models forthcoming, irrespective of the OEM.
Also, it is not known what prompted Kobo to change its OEM partner mid-way. Maybe Netronix was struggling to keep up with the demand of Kobo e-readers. What is interesting is that Kobo never revealed they switched to a different OEM, or that the Clara BW now comes with a larger battery.
It now remains to be seen if the feat is going to be repeated with the Clara Colour as well. Both the Clara BW and Clara Colour are identical save for the color display of the latter. In fact, a bigger battery will make more sense on the Colour model, given that it drains more battery as it has to refresh more frequently to prevent the ghosting effect. Stay tuned.