Just because Bill Gates says something is so, doesn't mean it is. But like him or not, when Bill Gates makes a prediction, people listen. This time we get to hear some of his thoughts about e-books.
Quillblog refers to a
collection of quotes on the topic from a speech, and I think it's quite fair to say he's bullish on e-books.
Here is one example... "Reading is going to go completely online. We believe that as we get the smaller form factor, the screen has gotten good enough. Why is reading online better? It's up to date, you can navigate, you can follow links. The ads in the online reading are completely targeted as opposed to just being run-of-print, where many of the readers will find them completely irrelevant. The ads can be in new and richer formats. In fact the only drawbacks of the digital form are the things associated with the device: how big is it, heavy is it, how many hours of power does it have, how much do I have to spend to buy it? But those are things that once you achieve that threshold, in terms of the convenience and the cost, then you see a dramatic change in behavior. Today, for people who read newspapers and magazines, even the most avid PC user probably still does quite a bit of reading on print. As the device moves down in size and simplicity, that will change, and so somewhere in the next five-year period we'll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today."
In many ways, the hardware is getting very close to being reasonably priced, easy to use and sufficient quality to be wondering how close the tipping point is. But DRM and format wars still continue to drain the life out of the industry. Five years? Maybe. I hope so!
From
QuillBlog.