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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
Final answer...
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Not likely
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
2 - LCD screens such as Pixel Qi will be incorporated into many of the netbooks that are released and will capture a huge portion of eInk's potential market....
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I disagree. Not that "no one will read on a netbook ever," but that for the serious readers, the netbook will not satisfy.
• Netbooks will always be heavier than an e-book reader.
• Netbooks will always have a shorter battery life than an e-book reader (as they will be doing other stuff constantly).
• E-book readers don't need antivirus software, anti-spyware, firewalls, disk defragmentation, etc etc.
• Using a netbook to both read a book, and take extensive notes on said book (e.g. for a paper), would suck.
• Electronic paper has more than one use or market.
• Again, multi-task devices do not (and should not) necessarily replace a single- or focused-use device.
Pixel Qi might have something viable, but who knows? They're only had prototypes for like 2 weeks, so it's a tad early to bet the farm on them.
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
4 - Amazon will eventually sell their ebooks for all devices and become the hub for eBooks, if they do not which will be a disaster for their company Itunes will and Apple will do a little jig (ETA: 18-24 months)
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Yeah, no.
For better or worse, Amazon is the market leader in the same way the iPod / iTunes Store has been for a few years. People have complained for years that you can't play material bought through the iTunes store on competitor's devices, and yet somehow the iPod still dominates the market. And just like the iPod, even though the formats are a little limited, you can get books from other sources and they work just fine on the Kindle.
Amazon has full control over the Kindle. Start putting Kindle books on a competitor's device, and it's all headache and no benefit. No archiving, no Kindle store, no wireless delivery, no user data stats, no DRM. And who gets the calls if there's a problem with the books? Why would Amazon ever want to support a dozen devices by Sony and iLiad and Plastic Logic and so forth?
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
eInk device are not going to get enough volume to bring their prices down to what they should be....
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We have no way of know that, or what kind of economies of scale or other manufacturing improvements they will gain from being acquired. Again, they also have more potential applications than just e-book readers.
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
Mainstream people will not pay $400+ to read books when we use computer screens all the time.
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Again, you don't need "mainstream people" to buy your device in order to be successful, as long as you can capture the heavy readers who buy most of the books anyway.
Or to put it another way: Why put a lot of effort into capturing a mass audience, when they aren't going to buy a lot of books anyway? Why even spend $100 on an e-book reader, when you only spend $15 a year on paper books anyway?
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
A netbook with a Pixel Qi screen at $400 is a much better deal than a Kindle or any other ebook device at $400 because you can use it in so many other ways.
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Uh huh. The catch is, generally speaking: The more things your device can do, the less capable it is at doing specific things.
E.g. a 32gb iPhone costs $300 plus the monthly service fee; a 120gb iPod costs $250 with no extra fees, and since it isn't operating as a wireless device, has a longer battery life. Or, an 8gb iPod Nano is half the price, weight and size of an iPhone.
Single-use devices hang around a lot longer than is reflected by the Hype Machine surrounding new electronics. TV's, alarm clocks, wrist watches, radios, phones, DVD players, MP3 players, cameras and so forth haven't and won't go away just because you can put all of those functions into a single netbook. And again, iPods are still outselling iPhones by a huge margin.
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
Publishers will eventually be forced to release their books as eBooks at competitive rates as they get served with the iTunes effect of everyone just getting their books for free....
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$10 / e-book is already pretty competitive -- and around the same price as a lot of other content. The publisher's response, by the way? They're champing at the bit to set their own (higher) prices for retailers.
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Originally Posted by junkyardwillie
their prices imply it costs as much to create an eBook as it does for a paperback book and that is not true unless they have the most inefficient computers known to man.
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...except that the retailer takes a chunk of the revenue, and has their own costs -- including processing, storage, data transmission, customer service, taxes, legal fees, marketing -- and still needs to stay in line with the competition. Meanwhile the publisher has royalties, their own overhead costs and competitors.
Not that pricing is an exact science, but it amazes me nonetheless how people routinely underestimate the costs involved in a retail business....