Although the iPad may be a significant device, I think it is giving Jobs and Apple far too much credit to attribute the demise of these fledgling competitors to the iPad. Cool-er wasn’t a great product to begin with; iRex and PlasticLogic had financial problems long before Jobs decided that perhaps reading is a moneymaker. And was Audiovox ever more than a ghost whisper?

If you had told me that Amazon’s book sales were going belly-up since the iPad’s introduction, then I’d say Jobs and Apple are a real market force among ebook reading devices. But that hasn’t occurred. It is more likely that iRex, Audiovox, Cool-er, and PlasticLogic were buried by the success of Kindle, nook, Sony, and Kobo than by the iPad introduction.