Comments on: Survey Says: E-Readers Are Racing Toward Extinction http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Sun, 29 Mar 2015 05:31:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.5 By: Joanna Cabot http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1226418 Sat, 29 Dec 2012 22:34:24 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1226418 They are already doing it at Kobo, Dan—the boxing week Indigo sale is a free Kobo Mini when you buy an Arc tablet.

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By: Publerati http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1226357 Sat, 29 Dec 2012 15:10:29 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1226357 Does no one remember the Palm Pilot? Ereaders are the Palm Pilots of today. Multi-function always trumps single-function. Standalone GPS and cameras are being supplanted by smartphones; tablets will make ereaders obsolete quickly and even then there will only be room for two major players. I would bet on those being Apple and Samsung. Not Amazon. Not the Nook. Google Nexus in third place.

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By: Gary Frost http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225970 Thu, 27 Dec 2012 13:32:09 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225970 My collection of e-ink book readers is completed with the Kindle Paper White and Barnes & Noble Simple Touch. These should be the last dedicated, black and white electrophor devices. I also have the first Kindle and nook and some of the other e-ink e-books. Their obsolescence has been as much provoked by the advances of digital color printing as by any supersession of LCD phosphor devices.

They did transition somewhat to touch navigation and toyed with type size but otherwise the e-ink devices attempted only plain mimicry of their print exemplar. As straight reformats they provide daylight display without scratches. They are a comforting simulation for paper book readers but a failure as a shopping device. They cannot provide the mobile connectivity, news tiling, or comic book display that the hand-held reading future requires. They end as they began; wonderful little electric books.

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By: Gary http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225740 Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:25:32 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225740 They manufacture and sell an awful lot of basic, four function electronic calculators every year, despite the fact that every smart phone, tablet, notebook, laptop, and desktop can run a calculator app. For some things it is just simpler and easier to have a dedicated device with a (more or less) standard user interface.

As Jussi points out, the price of electronics just keeps dropping, if you don’t try to add new features and functions all the time. I paid $115 in 1973 for an electronic calculator. I bought a model with similar capabilities last year for 99 cents.

I expect that the same thing will happen with dedicated ebook readers: some people will find them more convenient for some situations; the devices will become a niche market; and the price of the devices will continue to fall.

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By: Jussi Keinonen http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225710 Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:17:40 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225710 I also don’t believe that dedicated readers (people) will start using tablets for their reading. Tablets will stay eternally heavier than text-based e-readers, because they’re a part of the technology race. Meaning that engineers will always want to stuff the tablets with the newest technology, not making them lighter. That will also keep them expensive.

On the contrary, text-based e-readers can only get cheaper and lighter.

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By: -Andy- http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225671 Wed, 26 Dec 2012 03:42:08 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225671 @Michael W. Perry: “Media pundits tend to be fad-crazed. Everything is either ‘the coming thing’ or dying. I remember when they thought that Apple was doomed.”

Media pundits have been declaring (still!) that Apple was doomed for at least the last 2 decades. They’ve been wrong every time. Media pundits get paid to make outlandish pronouncements that generate clicks/advertising dollars. Just like technology/financial consultants do their best to make predictions to raise/lower stock prices so their firms can make a profit.

Although I have had an iPad since the first one came out (and other iOS devices since the first one went on sale) I would actually welcome a cheap ( $50-$75) ereader that supports ePub (not anything proprietary) that I could just throw in my bag when travelling without worrying about it breaking. Not sure it will happen any time soon.

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By: Michael W. Perry http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225647 Tue, 25 Dec 2012 21:13:19 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225647 Media pundits tend to be fad-crazed. Everything is either ‘the coming thing’ or dying. I remember when they thought that Apple was doomed.

I can’t imagine e-readers going away. My Kindle 3 is marvelous, far lighter and with a much longer battery life than my iPad. It fills a quite useful niche in my life and, like you noted, it’s not something I’ll need to upgrade anytime soon.

I do think that it’d help if the prices came down to the $49.95 range, so there’d be even less of ‘that tablet is only a little more’ temptation. It’d also help if:

* Amazon decides that subsidies make sense, particularly since no one expects an e-reader to get ebooks from multiple vendors. Dedicated devices do make sense, particularly as a way to read that works well outdoors. Who wants to sit in a dark room all the time?

* Someone creates an e-reader that could be configured to work with a particular public library system. The libraries could sell them at cost, and make money on the savings from converting more customers to digital.

* Someone might also create an ebook club. Each month members get their choice of a certain number of ebooks in the categories they’ve chosen. And once purchased, the ebook would be yours as long as you remain a member and without storing it on your device. That should be popular with people who read a lot of novels. And with no shipping costs, prices could be low.

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By: Binko Barnes http://www.teleread.com/ereaders/survey-says-e-readers-are-racing-toward-extinction/comment-page-1/#comment-1225644 Tue, 25 Dec 2012 20:58:26 +0000 http://www.teleread.com/?p=75900#comment-1225644 If you are a person who has loved to read all their life then you can’t beat a simple dedicated eReader. It’s the modern equivalent of the cheap paperbacks that I carried with me constantly as a kid.

But few people are dedicated and focused readers. When I was a kid I can’t remember a single other kid who constantly carried a book for reading pleasure like I did. So, tablets actually make more sense for most people since they are so much more flexible.

We are looking at at a tablet-centric future world. Tablets won’t just reduce eReaders to a niche product; they will also start taking a big bite out of the desktop computer market. The newer tablets are amazingly powerful little handheld computers in their own right.

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