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New graphic charts the e-book industry, scares small children
September 22, 2009 | 12:42 am
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By Evan Leibovitch
Editor’s note: These are Evan’s personal opinions. Also see Paul Biba’s different perspective. – D.R.
Sometimes I really wonder what the point is of some of these industry charts with all the multi-colored arrows and intertwined corporate logos—except to prove that the authors have plenty of time on their hands. I guess this one, which claims to describe the e-book universe, serves a purpose or three:
- It helps show that there are many players in the field, some of them well known brands;
- Being able to explain it makes you the in-house e-book guru;
- Everything ends at the iPhone
Beyond its superficial complexity I don’t think the e-poster really does much to advance the state of wisdom in the field. There are far too many logos that are lonely, lost, unconnected to anything (Asus and Hearst, to name two) — and they totally forgot about Adobe. While some may see value in being able to list all those big companies involved, the needless confusion of it all is borderline fear-mongering.
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Comments:
The original Techflash article already includes comments by other readers (including myself), of the areas where the graphic falls far short.
For instance, the significant lack of independent publishers, small and large (like, again, myself), many of which support various formats, and therefore, more reading devices, than this graphic would suggest. That alone would seriously change the reality of this graphic, leaving it looking very differently than it does now.
It is also very U.S.-centric, it omits e-book reading on computers and laptops, and it omits PDF (recently pointed out to still be the most ubiquitous e-book format out there).
This graphic is quite clearly a “newbies” graphic, suited for someone looking for companies to invest in, but not too useful for anyone else. And in fact, the omission of the OEB (ePub) format will likely collapse the plans of many of these companies banking on proprietary formats and exclusive deals, so it might not be too worthwhile for investors as-is either.
Of course, the site does say they plan to update the graphic with many of the points that have been brought to their attention. We’ll see.