The Bookseller’s “FutureBook” blog reports on the results of The Bookseller’s third annual survey of UK consumer reading habits—with some figures that show that digital is definitely on British citizens’ minds.
But apparently dedicated readers aren’t so much. Only 26% of the survey participants had ever heard of a Kindle, 41% the Sony Reader—but 60% had heard of the iPad at the time the survey was done in March. (The iPad is scheduled to launch in the UK on Friday.) And 70% said they would either definitely or likely not buy an e-reading device in the coming year.
The only way forward I can see for a dedicated e-reader is to drive price down. After Friday, who would want to buy an e-reader (particularly a monochrome one), when you can get an iPad for around the same ball-park price-wise, and it will play video, surf the web etc? And our survey backs that up. The main driver for customers who said they could be persuaded to buy an e-book was that if it ‘cost less than £100.’ Over to you, Amazon and Sony.
Of course, the UK market has not had as great a focus on e-books as the USA has, which could partly explain the results. But still, it seems as if there as here, it might take the release of the iPad to really turbocharge the e-book market.
Now that is not all that true.
They had that multi-color cased Cool-er
http://www.coolreaders.com/row-map3.asp
And they had that Elonex being sold through their Borders Books. So they have had more than a few specific brands available to them.
BeBook and Sony had retail store presence as far back as 2008. 😉
Of course, the signature quote that the iPad costs the same as an eReader is just a wee bit off-base. Cause with the iPad running US$500-850 (and that’s excluding connectivity charges), I can’t think of many eink readers running even $500.
It does seem that the further one goes from Amazon’s sphere of influence (or Russia) the less ebook awareness there is. And the UK seems to be equally distant from both, so… 🙂
If 70% said they weren’t buying a reader in the next year, then 30% were at least giving it serious thought! I’m guessing that most companies selling ebook readers would be quite happy with those sort of sales numbers… Also, I’d have to repeat Felix’ point that the _cheapest_ ipad costs £500. You can pick up an ebook reader for £130. I’m not sure they count as “in the same ballpark pricewise”.
130 for a single function device versus 500 for 150,000 functions and color and speed etc etc etc is sort of a silly argument.
Sure a calculator can do a few of the things a laptop is capable of but would you compare them really?
I own both a calculator and a laptop.
😉
Sure, but I bet you don’t say things like… People would rather buy a laptop than a calculator. I wonder why?