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Originally Posted by wallcraft
I agree, particularly the large screen devices. Also $499 is now the top end price.
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Absolutely, and at $499, Skiff and Plastic Logic effectively just went out of business. I seriously doubt they could sell their devices for, say, $200 or so, which is where they'd have to price them to get any serious interest generated. It's not so much that $499 is the top end price, it's that you'd have to price any e-ink device, no matter how large or well-designed, at least half that price to get enough consumer interest to keep an ongoing business viable. E-ink simply has too many limitations for the average consumer, who is going to want a device that has full color and all the other things the iPad can do that e-ink is at least 5 to 10 years away from being able to provide. If the device is priced low enough, then enough people will still buy them, which is why I see the Kindle and the smaller, cheaper Sony devices still perhaps remaining on the market. Anything over the 6"-sized readers, though, is basically out of business now. I think e-ink will continue to be developed, because at faster refresh rates and especially with a full color gamut, that sort of screen has interesting promise, but those sorts of things are still at least a couple of years or more off in the future. For now, e-ink readers are dead.
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Don't forget that the enTourage eDGe is $490 for two screens. By this summer we are going to see Android-based iPad clones for way less than this.
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The Android devices ought to be interesting.