|
In the early days of the microcomputer the hardware was way ahead of the software, some say that is still the case and I agree. New units and platforms came out every month and software developers jumped from one to another patching their code for the flavor of the month. With all of the new eink devices showing up on the market and those planned/announced/leaked it looks like the same situation again.
To sell to a wider market you need available content that the people want. Picking up from the prior example, the IBM PC did not catch fire and set sales records until Lotus 1-2-3 became the "must have" application. Later, MP3 players did not take off until Apple opened their iTunes store for the iPod. The same will be true here. Without a depth of offerings for the unit -- new and existing books still in copyright -- it will not sell in enough volume to establsh an on-going market for itself. In the eink area only Sony has done this that I know of. Amazon can once they get their unit to market. Those are the two I would bet on to survive at the moment.
The Illiad? An interesting piece of engineering from the early days of eink.
|