Computerworld writer: ‘Eight reasons why e-readers could fail’

Comments:

• asphalt says:

  November 21, 2009 at 11:34 am

  e-readers aren’t going to fail; it’s just going to take them awhile to figure themselves out. a couple of small points.

  1. long-form reading is unlike any other human activity, so it is not silly to imagine that people who read seriously will continue to desire a unitasker.

  2. public perception still appears to be that e-readers are *book* analogues. more significantly, they are also *bookcase* analogues, and are therefore fairly economical. as long as they don’t become obsolete every other hour, or prove not to be durable with normal use. which is a separate discussion.

  3. i don’t know about you, but i’m beginning to perceive that a *significant* swath of the naysayers comprises people who self-identify as ‘readers’, but don’t really read more than a book or two a year.
• john says:

  November 21, 2009 at 11:59 am

  i’m so tired of the apple tablet thing. i got an ereader for the express purpose of reading, why would i want a table with lcd and all kinds of other distractions?
• Daniel Udsen says:

  November 21, 2009 at 12:38 pm

  The reason ereaders fail is two fold.
  1. they economics of ereaders.
  2. Smartbooks.

  There have always been a segment of the industry who wanted the perfect one trick product, itøs maybe 5% max of the market and this is where dedicated readers is now and where they are going to stay.

  It doesnt matter how much anodoctal evidence people come up with the statistics still speek it’s language people do read long form on LCD screens.

  Price. a sony reader cost €400,- most titles for it are more expansive then paperbacks and the same goes or the kindle. The notion that they are huge cost savers is due to false asumptions on pricing especially when we factor in used book stores, or libraries.

  It does’nt really work to well with huge hi volume discussion sites like slashdot or dailykos where a threads often run into 100 pages of printed text. It dont really gives you full access to Project gutenberg and the whole underforrest of pure amateur digital self publishers. things a smartbook will.

  It’s not an expandable item, your going to be carefull with it, especially when living in rainy areas, and theres a limit to how much hardware you want to travel with, and the laptop is already on most peoples list.
• Frode Aleksandersen says:

  November 21, 2009 at 1:21 pm

  There will be a market for dedicated reading devices as long as they have the distinct advantages they already have:

  - battery life
  - screen clarity and readability in sunlight
  - weight
  - size

  If you can get a tablet with all those features, then I agree there’s nothing left for the dedicated devices. It’ll probably happen eventually, but at that point I think we can safely just redefine what an e-reader is. e-readers are getting more advanced capabilities (like the nook), and tablets and laptops are getting better form factors (pixel qi, netbooks, more battery life etc). It’s a move towards convergence, not obsolescence.

  Prices, digital rights issues and all the other factors mentioned are growth slowing factors, not market-killing issues. If it was, we’d already be seeing the collapse of ebook publishing and device sales. Instead we’re seeing the opposite.
• Jean K says:

  November 21, 2009 at 1:33 pm

  FEAR! Uncertainty! DOUBT!

  Oh please.

  Stephen King just released his entire backlist in E.

  2 major authors does not an argument make. Especially when compared to the prolific Mr. King, who has been experimenting with digital media for a long time – and writing much longer than either of the two writers mentioned.

  The NYPL has thousands of eBooks in circulation.

  Apple’s rumored tablet will still be an “also ran” compared to the iPhone. Whatever they release, it will not have the same mass media appeal. Furthermore, the unit is still a MYTH at this point! I have an iPhone AND a Sony Reader. I know many other people who have both iPhone and dedicated readers. Why? Lots of people say its because the dedicated reader lets them escape from the world of multitasking (I’m one of them). Other people prefer to keep their phone separate from other functions that could be battery intensive – in an emergency, you’re going to need that phone battery to be up and going. Not so much with a dedicated reader – unless you consider boredom an emergency. (Which I do, which is why I carry both. And a separate GPS unit, too – because guess what happens when your phone rings in the middle of a GPS route and you answer? I learned this lesson on my Blackberry Curve.)

  Computerworld is out to sell magazines. They need content for their purpose. Speculative content is still content.

  I’ve been trying to figure out how to get all my gadgets into one box since the Kyocera 6035 Palm Phone. It doesn’t work. You always wind up compromising on something. This is one of those things that most people don’t think about too much until they’ve encountered one or more of the gotchas.
• Danny Bloom says:

  November 22, 2009 at 5:09 am

  That was a very good article. I think that the key is going to be smartphones. People are going to want everything on their handy phone, from email to e-reading apps. In the end, I think the smartphones will win out.