Quote:
Originally Posted by boswd
Also what I think the bigger question is how much of the total market has ereader grabbed and how much is left as an untapped market?
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That is a big unknown at this point, indeed.
What *is* the natural size of the dedicated reader market? Is it just 15 million units a year? Doubtful. 30? 50? Bigger?
We're clearly past the early adopter/enthusiast phase, which not everybody has quite internalized yet.
And the market has shown explosive growth in the last 18 months; we've gone from companies bragging about sales of 25,000 units to companies keeping mum unless they've moved a million. But there is a lot of "noise" product getting attention without generating sales. It makes certain segments and regions appear more significant than they *currently* are.
I suspect there is still significant growth to be had, especially in europe. That whole market can't continue its fragmented Shakespearean "sound-and-fury" state much longer. The rest of the world? Hard to tell. Content availability and culture play a big part into reader sales...
My best guess is that dedicated readers is a naturally smaller market than smartphones or PCs but that there's at least one and maybe two doublings in scale before sales slow down. Should be good for maybe 30 million a year.
When we see 30 million? Haven't the foggiest. Maybe 2015, maybe 2020.
In a way, it really depends on the non-Amazon vendors coming up with truly competitive product.
The more vendors get what the market values, the faster we get there.