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By David Rothman

cellphoneE-books on phones are still rare in the grand scheme of things. True geeks may find themselves carrying around both phones and e-book reading gizmos–a point well made in a photo by Robert Nagle, a TeleBlog regular. But could this change somewhat? And could many users even start out with cellphones as their first e-book-capable device?

A billion cell phones may be shipped this year, according to Portable Design. Now–imagine if just one phone in a thousand were used to read e-books. That’s would be a million units. And one in a hundred? Ten million. The big “ifs” are whether the e-book and telecom industries can hold down prices and sufficiently increase the number of titles. Also, screens need to be legible and software usable. Oh, and truly nonproprietary e-book standards and sanity on DRM would help as well.

Another perspective: eBooks are what your PDA was made for. This is an old article (seen via Palm 24|7) but will still ring true to many.

Credits: Billion stat spotted via MobileRead. Robert’s gizmo photo is licensed via Creative Commons. The caption: “The Geek’s Burden.”

 
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