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Originally Posted by Harmon
Not exactly. Yes, there's a kind of Balkanization, but it does not have nice tidy borders.
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H'm, I didn't think that "Balkanization" suggested a neat and well-defined situation, maybe I have the wrong metaphor.
At any rate, while I agree that in this situation you would have smartphone and PC options (which I mentioned to bust Wolf's chops), the open question is the role of dedicated devices in the future. My expectation is that they will be around for awhile, both for specialized uses (e.g. education) and for heavy readers. One thing to note is that the "heavy readers" represent a disproportionate percentage of the market; so you could have 80% of ebook readers using PC's and smartphones, but each of those readers only buys 2-4 books a year; whereas the remaining 20% of book buyers purchase 5-15 books per year (or more) and thus represent 50% or more of revenues. (I don't recall the exact figures offhand, but something like this is the current structure.) So the dedicated device market could have far more of an effect than we normally assume.
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Originally Posted by Harmon
This situation reminds me of the situation I face whenever I want to buy a car. There are all sorts of options out there, but it seems that I can never get the precise ones I want in the same car. So I get a car that covers most of the bases, and live with it.
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I suggest you read
Stumbling Upon Happiness, by the way, as the author discusses how being exposed to too many options can actually result in your being less satisfied with your choices....