Comments on: Think ‘09 was a banner year for e-book gizmos? You ain’t seen nothin’ compared to 2010, says Gartner analyst

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:44:52 +0000

That chart from IDPF irritates the hell out of me every time this story is updated. The smooth line they have fitted to it is completely inappropriate. They’ve chosen a mathematical function that decreases at the start, goes below zero for five quarters before finally curving up! I can understand the desire to smooth out some seasonal fluctuation but their approach is inappropriate. Time to hire someone with basic mathematical ability.

By: Carol A

Carol A — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:34:41 +0000

Hmm – not a very good track record for an analyst! About the only thing that might happen is that once the market is saturated (like MP3 players) sales start to slow down as the only sales are to replace breakages etc. That doesn’t mean they aren’t popular, just that there won’t be a lot of new user sales.
Another strange marketing ploy – why did the Kindle take so long to get to Europe and Australia? Both places have a high rate of book reading, probably higher than anywhere else. There are almost no book readers available in Australia, where people read a lot of books and love any techno-gadget available. Was it just a lot stricter laws? Apple had this problem with the I-Phone being so closely tied to one ISP; it had to open up to more competition.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:53:23 +0000

Just for the record, it should be noted that this is the same Gartner who in 2006 predicted the demise of Apple and suggested they’d be better off getting out of the hardware business, and licensing their products to Dell:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39284186,00.htm