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Old 01-22-2010, 02:11 PM   #8
Alisa
Gadget Geek
Alisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongueAlisa can tie a knot in a cherry stem with his or her tongue
 
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Posts: 2,324
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Device: Paperwhite, Kindle 3 (retired), Skindle 1.2 (retired)
That's one way to go. Personally, I think the winners will be the folks who make multifunction devices that are as comfortable to read on as an e-ink reader and have enough battery life for us to not worry about charging all the time. People will pay more for them because they do more. The race to the bottom for prices on dedicated devices will just end up with poor quality devices and razor thin margins. Considering how few people read enough to justify even a $150 device that is only good for reading in the style of our current models, that doesn't strike me as a great business. Thin margins need high volume sales. I also wonder how much of the market of folks that read avidly has already been captured by the current products. How many people are left who would buy a reader at $150 who wouldn't buy a one for $250? There are plenty of used readers available for around the $150 price point already. Most current device owners probably won't refresh for a couple years. By that time, there may be more compelling multifunction products than we have now.

People who read books occasionally would likely read ebooks if they already had something easy to read on. That could be a lot of ebook sales but those folks that read one or two best-sellers a year aren't going to drop money on a dedicated device. Unless that $150 reader has a fairly large, color screen, it won't attract the masses. Most people don't read books but they do read magazines and blogs. I bet plenty would be happy to get rid of paper magazines but they're not going to sacrifice the visual richness. And if they're reading on a screen, they'll likely prefer to have multimedia content available. By the time you could make a large, color reader for $150, I'm betting tablet hardware will have made the idea obsolete.

Last edited by Alisa; 01-22-2010 at 02:41 PM. Reason: Grammar
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