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‘E-reader makers seek bestseller but may end up duds,’ given all the rivals; $99 model coming soon?
January 10, 2010 | 11:31 am
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By David Rothman
I couldn’t agree more with Reuters—given all the new e-readers out there and the intense competition they may face in the future from improved netbooks and multiuse tablets.
Let’s just be grateful that many of the new entrants use the ePub format, and that the proprietary DRM is at least shared by many other machines, even if any DRM is far from ideal. So if the makers go kaput, the disasters might not be total.
Intriguingly, analyst Stephen Baker is quoted as saying that a $99 reader might show up much sooner than expected six or nine months ago, given all the competition.
Your own thoughts? How soon? And what do you think the display tech will be? E Ink? Pixel Qi? Just what?
Also of interest: E-book-related text and video from the NYT’s coverage of CES. You’ll see the new Bookeen Orizon, Spring Designs’ Nook-style Alex and others in action. Will B&N catch up with Spring in the browser department? Borders already has a deal to sell Spring readers.
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Comments:
The multitude of readers is just making the tower of eBabel bigger – while there may not be that many new formats, the number of readers and what formats they support is so varying that it’s becoming very confusing for the buyer.
One potential solution though is that instead of calling them ebook readers, how about “ePub readers”? (At least the ones that do support the format – some don’t.) That would take care of a lot of the confusion.
In the computing world, you have PCs, Macs and Unix – if you get a computer you know what you’re getting and what the main software format is. Same thing for other devices – DVDs play in DVD players, BDs in Blu-ray players. Why not go the extra step in this case and call the new readers that support it, ePub readers?
@Frode: Fascinating suggestion, thanks; I myself have been pushing the IDPF to do an ePub logo and make sure that it means something. Perhaps the IDPF should also trademark the term ePub Reader. Other standards assurance for the customer?
Granted, there are downsides such as the compatibility risks of DRM, even if Adobe has the lion’s share of the action right now. But at least there would be a little less confusion among customers.
One positive is that just because a gadget uses the term “ePub reader” doesn’t mean it can’t read other formats. But I couldn’t agree with you more that the main focus should be on ePub.
That said, the IDPF, the home of ePub, has a responsibility to accelerate standards development–something that was in the platform of the new president, George Kerscher. I want to see better book-to-book linking capabilities as a priority, especially now that we’ll soon be entering an era of networked books in the clouds.
Thanks,
David
I think that the market segments by anticipated use. Some want to read novels. I bought a Sony PRS-505 to squirrel away somewhere reading submissions to the journal I was editing at the time (the academic version of the slushpile readers who started to acquire Sony readers about the same time).
Today, what I’d *love* is a tablet-sized thing (close to 8.5×11 or A4) to read PDFs or student papers and annotate them by hand. That’s a niche: academics, plus anyone in business who has to review PDFs. But the annotations have to be able to stick or be folded back in the file to send back to the original author (or student or rest of business group). That stickiness/sharability of annotations/scribbles isn’t mentioned in the marketing stuff.
326,315 reasons we need to embrace ereader ASAP !!! http://www.ereaderuniverse.com/profiles/blogs/326315-reasons-to-embrace
The $99 reader is inevitable. As eReaders start to ship in the millions, the economies of scale will bring down component pricing. In about 12 months as (hopefully) a multitude of color e Ink like screens hit the market, that will further squeeze the low end. I’m predicting a $150 Black Friday special or two this year, with $99 not too far behind it.
Also, to Sherman: have you checked out Skiff ( http://www.thelewisfour.com/search/label/skiff ) for a tablet sized device? There’s been a lot more buzz about the Que, but at $650 to $800 I don’t see that working on the consumer end. Skiff has a beautiful form factor.