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By Joanna

dedicated.jpgWith all the new ‘convergence’ devices coming out these days—cell phone/media/gaming all in one—is there still going to be a demand for dedicated ebook readers? Would anyone buy a Kindle or a Sony or a Whatever when they could just read a book on their cell phone or magical tablet?

Yes. There IS still a demand and will continue to be, but in a different fashion. The days of jumping on the bandwagon with a generic ‘reader’ device just to get in the game may be gone, but I think what we will see in the ‘dedicated device’ market will be an increasing specialization. Companies won’t make ‘general’ readers for casual customers, who may not read enough to justify a dedicated device and won’t care about fancier features. Rather, they will make specific devices optimized for certain markets. For example:

1) DEVICES FOR A SERIOUS READER

These devices will improve on the more all-purpose experience of a convergence device by offering much better battery life for people who just want to read, and by offering feature sets designed to make this reading as seamless and meaningful as possible. Convergence devices will likely support the eventual winner or winners in the format war with ease, but the ‘serious reader’ device will likely support numerous and plentiful past formats as these customers tend to be the ones who early-adopted and have sizable libraries already in numerous legacy formats. They will also be less dependent on cell phone plans or internet connectivity—on-board ‘whispernet’ type service like the Kindle, or limited free wi-fi like the Nook will be standard so that voracious readers will never be without the means to buy a book.
They will also offer features to enhance the reading experience, such as on-board dictionaries or other reference materials, text to speech and perhaps a book recommendation engine or other ‘social media’ service. Some current devices are well-suited to this market, but I see them evolving to be lighter and less delicate, to support more formats and to offer greater feature sets. For example, as a multilingual reader, I have been enjoying the dictionary support on the Kindle (my Sony and iPod Touch don’t have this) but still find myself slowed down by verb phobia; the dictionary translates a conjugated verb into its infinitive, for instance. So it can tell you that ‘je parlais’ refers to the verb ‘to speak’ (which I knew already) but not that this is the past tense form. A built-in grammar helper would be a wonderful tool for those trying to read in a second language. I also think that we will see a greater diversification in the on-board stores so that people can continue to buy a bare-bones budget-priced ‘just the text’ version, but they will have the option to pay a premium for bonus content such as author interviews, reading guides, ‘backgrounder’ or study guide packages for non-fiction or academic work and multimedia versions they can download onto the ‘convergence’ device they have for other purposes.

2) DEVICES FOR A ‘JUNIOR’ OR ‘SENIOR’ READER

Watching a five-year-old have a go at my Sony Reader and a 70-year-old take on the Kindle alerted me to the need for devices optimized for these very different markets. On the junior end, the pre-chapter-book crowd reads with their fingers, so anything touchscreen-based would be a total disaster as they’d turn the pages by accident every time they pointed at a word. What this group needs is a sturdy reader with minimal distractions from buttons or controls of software. And it would need to include a stylus so they can point and read. Ideally, a parent or teacher could load it up for them and they’d be able to use it independently from that point; perhaps extra features such as dictionary support or text to speech could be built into and/or activated by controls on the stylus. I see this as a sort of hybrid between the Leap Frog system and a standard ebook reader. The Leap Frog lets kids touch a word and get a pronunciation or explanation, but it uses and requires special paper books which slide into a plastic frame. This would offer a similar stylus-based system but would be useable with any text file, whether a purchased book, a Project Gutenberg download or a Word document prepared by a teacher.

For the more ‘senior’ reader, I think the key features will be weight, navigation, connectivity and customization. My stepfather’s primary motivation for considering an ebook reader was arthritic hands that find the weight of a physical book difficult to manage, so a light form factor is critical. He found the tiny letter buttons and finicky five-way controller on my Kindle manageable—for now—but bigger buttons would definitely be a must for this sort of reader. And I think a convergence device might fail a reader like him in perhaps relying on a cell phone or data plan. His type tend to be travelers—visiting kids or grandkids who don’t live nearby, retreating to Florida to escape the snow or just traveling to enjoy their retirement. A device which is completely self-contained and on which he can buy and manage content without a computer would be a must-have. Finally, on the customization front, the ability to change the font size or appearance is already a standard feature on most devices. It should remain so on anything marketed to this demographic.

3) DEVICES FOR THE ACADEMIC MARKET

I see the ideal device for the academic market being a sort of digital three-ring binder: a light, thin tablet the size of a piece of paper, minus the distractions and battery-sucking features of the convergence device. It will have stylus support for features such as high-lighting/annotating and looking up words in on-board reference books. Imagine taking a course that uses this open-source French textbook . You’d be able to see the whole page at once on the paper-sized screen, and you could look up words with your device’s on-board dictionary. You could even do drill exercises directly inside the book as you read!

Such a device will support not just whatever standard book formats, but also PDF and Powerpoint—imagine using on-board wi-fi to download presenter notes before a university lecture, then being able to highlight or annotate them as you listen! I see this like a tablet-sized Palm device, where the low-tech screen offers cheap prices and long battery life and where you can use handwriting recognition or a plug-in keyboard to create a document on the fly if necessary. I know someone who once wrote a novel using a Palm with a keyboard!

Whether the battery life of an all-in-one device will be their downfall, or whether these devices will offer too limited a feature set to suffice for anything but general reading remains to be seen. For someone who reads many magazines and perhaps a few books here and there, a convergence all-in-one device might well do the job. But for those who read extensively or have special reading needs, I see there continuing to be a demand for dedicated devices. What do you think? Respond in the comments on how you see the device market evolving!

 
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