[pwjone1]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

Jobs declared the end of the desktop PC earlier this year as well. By my calendar, the desktop PC has been "ending" for the last 6 years but neither AMD nor Intel are exactly slashing prices on their latest-gen desktop hardware so once again it appears it's safe for us to just let the press continue thinking it knows anything about the subject.

I'm not going to worry too much about the quality if a web article, or not, the press (print + TV + web-based) has to publish things that draws readers, something along the lines of "PC still fine after all these years" would draw instead yawns. We bring it on ourselves, as consumers of the news. Jazzy/sexy/dramatic headlines suck us in.

In terms of the iPad survey, it was about what I would have expected, but I would hesitate in drawing too much of a conclusion from the eReader % numbers. The main reason is that the iPad users at this point are mostly early adopters, which means that the still-buy-eReader % is going to be substantially higher than for the later iPad (and eventual competitive slates) population as a whole. Early adopters tend to buy more stuff, and be more open to buying more stuff, it's what they do.

I think that despite the problems with the battery life and reading in sunlight, the iPad and similar are going to take a huge chunk out of the market for eReader potential market because:

1. They do color
2. They do color
3. They do color
4. Not many of read all that much in direct sunlight
5. A day of reading is good enough for most of us
6. Better one device that may cost a bit more, but does a lot more

If what you read is mostly fiction, then color is not the big deal thing, but if you read anything else, magazines, newspapers, text books, picture-books, blogs, etc., it's a big deal. It might even be the case that color eReaders would be an even nicer differentiator from printed media, in that color printing costs are such that it drives the cost of printed books up, whereas if you have a color eReader, it's a nominal incremental cost. Consumers want color, you can hardly find a black'n'white magazine these days, and all the newspaper publishers are switching or have switched to color (even NYT) for ads, and added punch. And once color eReaders (or tablets) are ubiquitous, even fiction will use a lot more color, not just for emphasis, but maybe border themes, pictures for chapter headers, etc.

So I think, particularly in the absence of high-volume color eReaders, that for most customers, an iPad sale will mean a lost eReader sale, until the color gap is rectified. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony is off figuring out how to do a tablet and/or get color into its eReader line, maybe a deal with LG (although it must torque them, since they partner more with Samsung), as they're already big color providers in TVs and Games and Computer monitors, the value and market persuasiveness of color has to be well understood by them. The iPads (and competitors) will get thinner and lighter, they'll get easier to read in sunlight (they already beat eInk for reading at night, which I suspect is more important to a lot of us anyway), they'll have longer battery life. eReaders can still do fine in the marketplace, but they will need to get cheaper, and they will need to get to color.