The Kobo CEO says that ebook readers will have to come down in price. No doubt there’s an industry analyst out there that will declare that dedicated readers will go extinct in the face of cheaper, multifunction tablet devices (read: iPad).
Analysts have been saying the same thing about cameras for years; that point and shoot cameras will fall by the wayside as the megapixels in phones pile up. But it hasn’t happened that way, with camera makers constantly innovating and giving tons of reasons (not all of which can be attributed to better software, it’s worth noting) to stick with a dedicated point and shoot camera.
So will next year’s ereader devices have to “sing and dance”? Perhaps. Let’s see if they all come with free 3G and real web browsers first.
ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
The devices, they may be a-changin’, but will interoperability really follow? There are a lot of ereader standards out there with no clear winner. Apple went with Epub for their iBooks store, but will it take off? Only time will tell.
What’s interesting about this is that it only happened after almost every major manufacturer announced plans for ereader devices at CES. Or does this have to do more with the emergent tablet marketplace that Apple is going to introduce in one week’s time?
A whole bunch of pictures of the Entourage eDGe. These guys won an award early on (deservedly) so a lot of these shots are from the winner’s circle.
Here are three shots from Hanvon’s booth. They’re a huge Chinese OEM for all sorts of devices, and their initial ereader prototypes was pretty thin.
I saw this article just after I clicked “post” on my last one. The MIT Technology Review does a great overview on the upcoming screen technologies vying for ereader attention, including Pixel Qi, Qualcomm’s Mirasol, Liquavista and Kent Displays.
The overall tone of this article is almost a cautionary one: why buy a black and white reader when screen capable of color and full motion video are promised to be out later this year?
No doubt there are hundreds of people in MIT’s Media Labs waiting for these technologies to apply them in ridiculous(ly awesome) ways.
The final weekend of CES has come and gone, but the ereader news keeps coming. Here’s a look around the web at the final coverage of ebooks and ereaders.
iriver shows off their Kindle Story (Engadget)
Wired enjoys Spring Design’s Alex, but realizes it faces some challenges ahead (Wired)
Jinke goes with SiPix panels over E-ink for their ereaders (Engadget)
Qualcomm’s Mirasol screen impresses with full motion video (Engadget)
Wired also goes hands on with the Plastic Logic QUE proReader (Wired)
The RCA Lexi fails to impress, work (Engadget)
Engadget does a great overview of ereaders and ebooks at CES
The explosion of ereaders at this year’s CES has been pretty remarkable. Not just the amount of devices being announced, but also the sheer quantity of viable technologies for future devices. This is a market and industry still wide open; there is no one format that rules over the rest (but plenty of contenders, see Blio).
The other issue is that in a world where smartphones are getting easier and easier to use and more people have them, people expect their devices to do more. Is there a place for a device that just reads books? Or are these devices expected to make your books do more? This will be an interesting year indeed!
And we know for a fact the interest is there: the Kindle is selling fairly well and a little bird told four7s that at least one of the device manufacturers discussed above signed an international distribution deal during a meeting at CES. We’ll be keeping track as more of these devices make it out of the gate.
This piece describes just how technology influences content, not the other way around. This is especially true for books in the coming months.
E-ink technology was all about displaying books as we’re used to them in a digital format. I say “as we’re used to them” because of the whole non-backlit, works fine in sunlight aspect of the technology, which are important considerations to make if you’re trying to replace books.
But with the torrent of e-ink devices literally days away, will they change the content? Probably not. Will they even change the way the content is delivered to you? Also probably not: the 3G, always-on delivery model that Amazon introduced with the Kindle is almost expected at this point. So the way the content is displayed is the same and the way the content is delivered is the same.
Where ebooks and ereader devices can truly make themselves stand out is how they enhance the book, how they take it further. More and more devices can do annotations and highlighting. These aren’t a feature.
Yet.
If we can take these features and make them more powerful, more accessible, then we’re beginning to change the way people use content. Only then can content be expected to change.
That’s all I’m allowed to say about that. Very, very exciting stuff.
“Tidal” is right. With six new readers announced simultaneously (three of which are actually pretty attractive), Copia mentions having a social networking aspect to their devices. Hopefully we can get some more detail on that.
