Thread: E-ink is dying(?)
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Old 12-15-2015, 07:37 PM   #16
davidfor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz View Post
Ooooh, clickbait title! Yay!

E-Ink is not dying. You just are seeing lots of people who aren't the target audience.
You aren't all of a sudden in the minority, you always were.
My experience matches the OP. But, I have also noticed that it has changed. When I started looking at ereaders in 2011, there would normally be several e-ink readers in use on the train carriage I was in. Or on the platform while I was waiting. Now, I rarely see another. A good half of the people are using some electronic device (excluding people using a phone as a phone). Probably half of those people are using a smartphone, the rest are split between tablets and laptops. And of course there's the guy I see at least once a week sitting there with his Macbook on his lap, his iPad on the seat next to him and listening to music on his iPhone (or maybe he's on the phone, but he doesn't seem to be saying much. Not even "Yes, dear"). And I do see people reading books on the tablets.

The same goes for the shops. When I bought my Kobo Touch, one chain had Kobo's, Sony's and one or two other brands. Plus a couple of cheap LCD readers. A second chain had Kobo's and something else. Now, that first chain only has Kobo's and the store I normally visit doesn't have any on display. The other chain doesn't carry them at all.

My take on this is that e-ink ereaders are becoming even more of a niche product than before. For most people, the extra function that a tablet has for not that much more, will outweigh the better reading experience of e-ink. In 2011, the price/performance of tablets was a lot worse. An ereader was relatively inexpensive, so a lot more people would have gone that way.

And there is the simple fact that an ereader is an extra device to carry. Each day I carry a laptop, an iPad, at least one ereader and my phone to work. Most people would find that excessive (to be honest, I do) and the ereader is the easiest to drop as all three other devices can perform the same function.
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