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I think the article is pretty much off base. First of all, it uses the useful term "walled garden" incorrectly. A "walled garden" is what you have when the user is in a closed off environment. Apple has a walled garden wrt apps (only) on the iPhone/iPad because the only apps you can put on your device are those you buy from Apple.
E-book readers aren't like this: a Kindle won't stop you from putting books from other stores on your device, nor will a nook or a sony. There may be formatting or DRM issues, of course, but the device itself is open.
What the author is actually describing is consolidation in the e-book market...but I think he's wrong about that at all, at least as a practical matter. First of all, it doesn't strike me that the e-book market is any more restricted than the pbook market. The market is still dominated by the same publishers - but most users have much more freedom to buy e-books than they ever did pbooks. And of course there is a wide array of PD books available, as well as many self published books.
It's not a perfect system...but it's much better than the pbook system in terms of choice.
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