Quote:
Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor
I think the ereaders vs tablet discussion is a lot like PDAs vs cell phones....
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Why, because it's one of the few cases where a multi-purpose device truly routed a dedicated one?
After all, video consoles -- which could easily be rolled into PC's -- are flourishing. Dedicated scanners, printers and faxes are also still around and doing fine, despite the ease of integrating them. You could replace almost all of the cutlery in your apartment with three sporks and a Swiss Army knife; so is that, in fact, what you do?
Anyway. Here's why ebook readers != PDA's.
• The hardware and software requirements of a PDA and a smartphone are nearly identical. E.g. both need light weight, decent battery life, an input method, software that syncs with other data, and so forth.
• "Reading" and "tablet use" only have a handful of characteristics in common, and some of those are at odds. E.g. a tablet needs to be good for video, an ebook reader does not.
• The limitations of an ebook reader can turn out to be highly beneficial for certain uses. For example, if I was a teacher I'd vastly prefer my students use a device that can only be used for reading books, than one that the student can easily switch in class to browse the web and respond to IM's.
• A fully integrated and multi-purpose tablet still does run the risk of interrupting the user (though I view this as a much lower risk than when tablets first came out).
• Readers are not a uniform group with similar buying habits; in particular, numerically most people only purchase a handful of books per year, while a small percentage of buyers purchase 10, 20 or more books per year -- and constitute an outsized part of the market.
In the same way that a DJ will prefer specialized software over iTunes, the heavy book buyers are much more likely to want a device that is optimized for reading than a multi-purpose device.
And Pixel Qi, if it ever does come out, is unlikely to change that equation.