Originally Posted by sl42
On the other hand, tablets and phones aren't exactly competing against ereaders, they are substitutes for them - in fact they vastly increase the pool of readers building up collections of text and becoming more used to the convenience of a digital library - and until battery technology improves, many of these people will buy ereaders to fix a limitation, and even after tablet battery life catches up enough there will still be many more readers who start by using their existing tablets and phones and wind up purchasing ereaders as second devices for the improved text/page quality. These are people who wouldn't have gone from paper to epaper directly, but might make that transition with the help of their tablet devices so they already have an existing elibrary built up that finally goads them into purchasing an ereader. Personally, I'm glad my tablet's battery was as bad as it was or I would never have switched over to a "real" ereader - now, of course, switching back would be out of the question until tablet displays improve enough to compete.
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