Thread: eInk readers dying before they spread?
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Old 06-09-2009, 01:36 PM   #17
Kali Yuga
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andybaby
does that number of ipods include touches, classics, and nanos etc?
Yes


Quote:
Originally Posted by Andybaby
4 million I phones. at the cost of almost a thousand each for apple , so over 4,360,000,000. cough.. that's a number, even if its only half that..
Yes, and? A number of what? What's the relevance of your revenue projections?

Just to be clear, I'm trying to point out that even though the iPhone gets all the press and attention, Apple is still selling nearly five times as many iPods (in various forms) as iPhones. I.e. the single-purpose device is still more popular than the multi-purpose device.

While an iPhone can do a lot more than an iPod Shuffle, that does not alter the fact that the Shuffle is far superior for certain tasks and uses than an iPhone. Similarly, an e-book reader will never be as versatile as an iPhone or a tablet or a netbook, but it will be superior for the specific task of reading. For those who read heavily -- and these are the people who presumably buy the most books -- an e-book reader will be the optimal choice, especially as they fall in price.

E.g. let's say there are 16 million iPhones in use, and their owners will buy on average 2 e-books a year; and 1 million Kindle owners who buy 20 e-books a year. The iPhones still generate more income, but with more overhead (as you now have 15 million more accounts to deal with), less effective marketing, and more competition for space and time and attention on the iPhone itself. At 1.6 million Kindle users, revenue is equal; 2 million and it's higher.

Mind you, I believe that it will be a good thing to have more people reading e-books. But mass appeal is not the only way to make money from e-books or e-book readers.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Boston View Post
These thoughts were probably posted elsewhere and nothing new...but the Boston Globe posted this blog which I found interesting and suggests how E Ink Corp's recent move may suggest they are questioning the technology's future.
At the risk of making an appeal to authority , the WSJ and many analysts are blaming it on a disastrous IPO market: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/...-e-ink-buyout/

We're still in the middle of a massive credit crunch, so I can definitely see how it is not easy to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for R&D, especially since a) they already had VC funding and b) the IPO market is moribund, thus hampering the ability to provide a massive payday to other sources of funding.
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