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Originally Posted by karunaji
Maybe I have over-emphasized the importance of hardware at the expense of authors, publishers and content vendors but I still believe that cheap e-readers are crucial in widespread adoption of ebooks.
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You are right about simplicity but it is achievable through well established open standards as well, not with proprietary platforms.
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But manufactures of cheap eReaders don't control that, the providers of the stores/DRM platforms do.
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The comparison with cell-phones is justified. You buy any cellphone you like out of hundreds of models available, insert your SIM card and start making calls. Transferring the contact list to the new phone is the greatest hurdle in this process. Why it should be different with books? You buy an e-reader, go online (through WiFi, 3G or via computer), enter your password for your bookstore(s) (Amazon, Kobo, etc.), deregister the old device if required and continue reading your books as before. Any other functions will be secondary and non-essential.
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And for Amazon this will only work on platforms Amazon have decided they want to support, the other manufactures cannot control this.
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Kindle sells best because of lower price only.
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No, this is just wrong.
A big selling point of Kindles is that they
do work exactly as you described above to access books from Amazon, and other eInk readers do not.
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Pocketbooks and others are still too expensive for masses. They are not on the level of cheap cellphones yet. In either case I suspect that in Russia most ebooks read on these devices are non-DRM works, publicly available, i.e., from lib.ru , or otherwise. If e-ink prices fall, Kindle loses its edge.
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If all you are reading is free content, then yes.
If a bookstore achieves the sort of market dominance with for-sale content that Amazon have achieved in the US, then their preferred reader will have the edge.