Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
I think it's like a rowboat; it's a technology that works as it is, you can't really innovate because too much innovation will make it into something else. Decent quality reading tablets were the innovation, not new developments in eInk readers.
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Turns out the greeks invented rowboats. Not much change since. That might be the Amazons fault for attacking greece shortly afterwards.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5344230_history-rowboats.html
Aaannnyway...
Ebook readers may turn out to be like DVRs, more of a feature/function than a standalone product with broad appeal. Nowadays TiVo is still around but the vast majority of people get their "recorded TV" via cable box, streamed video, or DVD sets. (Unless its Game of Thrones, which most people get via the darknets.
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Ebook reading may likewise migrate to a large extent to smartphones (especially the 5-6in ones) and tablets, leaving eink readers behind as a niche product for those that really care about the hardware, like with TiVo. Digital cameras and media players are another example: there will always be room for dedicated devices but the majority of users these days rely on smartphones.
Markets evolve.
Hopefully ebooks/ereaders won't evolve as PDAs did and vanish as their function got totally subsumed into the smartphone feature set.