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Originally Posted by sassanik
Who knows Apple might actually invent a reasonably priced eReader that is as cool as their iPods (yes I admit it I have a blue iPod and I love it!). One can hope!
I think that the person who reads ebooks is probably not your average book reader. As most of the population does not read books regularly, someone who reads several books a week is its own little market.
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That's the problem:
little market. Apple is unlikely to build a reader because the market simply isn't large enough.
The iPod works for them because everyone listens to music. The iPhone works because nearly everyone has a cell phone. They can sell millions of each.
The total market for dedicated readers at this point is likely on the order of a few hundred thousand devices for all reader manufacturers combined. Apple needs
much bigger numbers to justify doing it.
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I could see the iPhone as a helpful device to students who could use a easy way to lug around text books.
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Assuming the texts were in a format readable on the iPhone. If they are in electronic format at all, it is likely PDF, which does not normally play well on a handheld -- the screen size is too small for effective display, and most PDFs don't reflow to fit the screen. The other issue is annotation. How do you write notes in the margin on a ebook? Some formats support annotation, but not all.
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Dennis