Research house and e-book seller bullish on e-books

[Alexander Turcic]

It's not that we believe every single word research house Gartner says, but this time we really hope they are right: following their estimates, at the ongoing growth rate of e-books, "by 2010, more people will be reading e-books than the old-fashioned paper variety." At least this is what M. Foltran, founder of e-book store eBook Impressions, likes us to believe by extrapolating current growth digits over the next five years.

Thanks to volwrath for the tip!

[volwrath]

The thing that I found interesting is that 62% of people read on their laptops. Whoa!

[Bob Russell]

Just imagine if people ever start carrying around Franklin-planner sized table pcs like they all used to carry around paper planners. It could become a cultural shift, like what we see with iPods! And it would seem to be a very natural place to do reading if the screens were nice, batter life good, prices reasonable, DRM not too intrusive, etc etc.

[hacker]

Originally Posted by BobR

Just imagine if people ever start carrying around Franklin-planner sized table pcs like they all used to carry around paper planners. It could become a cultural shift, like what we see with iPods! And it would seem to be a very natural place to do reading if the screens were nice, batter life good, prices reasonable, DRM not too intrusive, etc etc.

Now if the screen were part of the planner (like the notepad in the back page of those leather-bound planners), with the ability to wirelessly read the news or store/fetch the news onto local memory for offline reading, THEN I think we'll have something.

Keeping my calendar (paper and electronic), my reference materials and my planner in one place with wireless connectivity (Bluetooth or 802.xx), would really revolutionize how office workers manage their workload. Trust me on this one...