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The author seems to see eink ... tablets ... cloud as some sort of progression. Yet the first two are consumption tools and the latter is a delivery mechanism.
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That was unclear analysis- but make no mistake, Amazon views the Kindle and the Amazon tablets as delivery vehicles, and actually, retail channels.
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I don't see any need to fuss much with the ebook purchase model: some set fee per title obtained which flows back to the retailer, publisher and author. Except for niche markets, any subscription model gets to be clumsy.
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On this forum, there are always 2-3 threads complaining about "agency price fixing", etc, etc. On this forum, there are a lot of people that want to change the model
. The people who object to "high agency prices" may be attracted to a model in which you pay much less per book but don't get to own the book. And there is also the whole DRM thing : authors don't want to give up DRM protection, Mobile Readers want to get rid of it. With the cloud subscription model, there is no need for DRM.
Netflix and music subscription models seem to work across the board: why not something similar for e-books?
Even if cloud streaming models don't work, why not rental models- ala movies?
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And I agree that at around $100, eink as a dedicated reader is a pretty strong value proposition. There's a camera built into virtually every smartphone these days but people continue to buy dedicated digital cameras. Tablets and other devices will take a chunk of the market but eink is likely to hold value in being simple, inexpensive and convenient.
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After some thought, I think you may be right about this. What will happen is that the focus and research and development will move to tablets. I don't think its a surprise that that you hear lots of buzz about Amazon tablets, but not a peep about the Kindle 4. There will be a Kindle 4 sometime next year, IMO-probably a knockoff of the Nook Touch. But I think that will be about it for Kindle development. They'll continue to make Kindles-just not new and better Kindles.