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About $300 for the Plastic Logic machine—and launch in early 2010?
August 3, 2009 | 2:27 pm
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By David Rothman
You’ve seen similar info before.
But now the Times in the U.K.—a partner of Plastic Logic—is saying launch of the Plastic Logic e-reader in the States will be in at the start of 2010.
Price is to be similar to the Kindle’s, now selling for $299. UK launch is to follow later that year or the next.
Meanwhile thanks to Ted Treanor for the pointer to a related Forbes article saying that “The number of eReaders sold in the U.S. will top 3 million by the end of 2009, with 13 million selling by the end of 2013, Forrester forecast in a research note published last month.”
Also of interest: Google roundup on the Plastic Logic machine.
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Comments:
The article is quoted correctly, but I think “the Kindle” must mean the Kindle DX at $489. At 10.7″ diagonally, the Plastic Logic screen will be larger than the Kindle DX’s 9.7″ screen.
Is there a complete Comparison Spreadsheet anywhere on the Internet for all the Devices on the market or soon to be on the market, that you guys know of?
Thanks.
Let’s see – current eInk eReaders are fragile, have slow page turns and are monochrome. They’ve been around for about two years, and have sold about 3 million.
For the next four years, the prediction is they they’ll only sell another 10 million – say 4 million in the next two years and six million in the following two?
That’s an incredibly slow growth rate in sales for an emerging technology market, where features are going to rapidly increase and prices are going to slowly fall.
Let me pluck some figures from the air – I’d say it’s more likely to be six million over 2010/2011 and 14 million over 2012/2013. And I suspect that I’m being conservative.
@ Paul: Actually, I think you’re being optimistic. If eReaders continue to be single-purpose devices, I don’t think they’ll grow that fast. Personally, I don’t see that as a problem. After all, remember that it’s the installed base that matters the most. As long as I keep buying books for my PRS505 from the Sony bookstore, it keeps generating money for them.
I think super-growth in the market will eventually come, but only when you get the educational aspect of it folded in. My sense of eReaders right now is that they’re most useful to people who are avid readers and either travel a lot or have a problem with book storage. People like that (people like me) are great to sell to, because we keep buying. To move beyond that, you have to make the devices more useful to studens and schools. To me, that seems more like a 2015 kind of thing, but I’d love to be wrong.
Spencer: The MobileRead E-book Reader Matrix is the closest I know of to a complete comparison.
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
Its only downside is that the entries are added by volunteers, and so the coverage of less popular devices depends on someone caring enough to add them.
Paul, you need to remember one very important point. Most people don’t read for pleasure. Most people don’t value reading. This is especially true for the younger generation.
My guess would be that 90% of high school or college age kids own some kind of ipod or similar music playing device. What percentage of people this age are going to be interested in a dedicated ebook reading device? Maybe 2% or 3% at best.
So growth of electronic reading devices will be slow but steady. Especially when you consider the current state of DRM. Personally, I own a kindle but I’ve stopped buying ebooks altogether until DRM issues get sorted out. All I do now is scan the kindle store once a week to see what’s free.