Quote:
Originally Posted by dwig
Personally, I doubt that ereaders, as we know them today, will exist at all 10 years from now. We'll just have multifunction tablets. In the electronic device world, the history has been that "one trick ponies" don't survive long.
Once technology advances to eliminate the unique advantage that the one trick pony has, it dies as its function is merged with another device. PIMs (e.g. Palm Pilots, ...) as phones became smart phones and got smaller and lighter, allowing them to assume all of the utility of the PIMs. As it is today, tablets are struggling to maintain a position outside of the Schwarzchild Radius of that Black Hole that is the ever more powerful "smart phone". The tablet world will likely absorb the ereader world as pressure increases from smart phones' the ever expanding influence.
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E-readers have one more advantage besides e-ink: they weigh several times less than tablets. As long as they do so, I doubt they're in danger of disappearing. Not everyone wants to read on a device that's hard to hold in one hand for long periods.
As for phone screens, they're too small for comfortable reading. Much bigger than 5'', and they become too uncomfortable for their primary function, speaking.
The way I see it, either tablets become much lighter in the future, or e-readers stay for heavy readers (admittedly a niche).