[autophile]

I voted "depends on iLiad 2", but here's how I see iRex surviving:

1. Two-tiered marketing approach. One is for business/academic, with annotation features. One is for personal use, without annotation. Screen for business should be bigger than screen for personal. Maybe the personal version should go with a Sony Reader PDA type touch-screen, depending on whether that is more reliable or not.

2. Staying ahead of the technology curve. Technology increases exponentially. We've got color ePaper coming out, and I expect higher resolution, higher depth, and faster update ePaper every year. iRex needs to leverage these so they don't get left behind by newer companies coming out with the latest ePaper, leaving iRex looking like T-Rex (the dead, fossilized version, not the Walking with Dinosaurs version).

3. Active development. iRex needs to support not only frequent updates for the base iRex software, but also a lively third-party development community. Reflashing is not negotiable; it must be available for users to reflash to the base factory settings. To serve business/academia, iRex needs to offer custom development (i.e. pay iRex to develop your app for you). For all tiers, iRex needs to listen to and incorporate user feedback.

4. Luck. Like it or not, new companies fail most of the time, regardless of product coolness. iRex may need to partner with a larger, more established company (perhaps even *shudder* Sony) that is not going to go under if it doesn't show a profit within two years. The latest technology is always the most expensive, and the long tail of early adopters may not be enough to make iRex profitable.

That said, I think the iLiad is a sweet, sweet platform, and would hate to see iRex go under.

--Rob