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IDK. Us ebook early adopters want it to be BS. But the fact is the publishing world is dominated by folks that by say 5 or less books a year--people just buying the Harry Potter, Twilight, Stephen King, John Grisham types of books.
Those folk will never buy a dedicated e-reader--they just don't read enough to have any interest in one. But they may buy some kind of Tablet. Not everyone is a heavy reader. But most everyone (especially say the 40 and under crowd) is addicted to e-mail, internet, movies, tv, games etc. etc. as well as doing computing work, reading magazines etc. which tablets are great for.
So while I think dedicated readers are here to stay as there's a sizable niche of bookworms that wants such device as this site shows, I do think tablets like the iPad will sell much better. And in 5-10 years I think the majority of e-books--at least for mainstream bestsellers like those I listed above--will be read on tablets as that's what the casual readers will gravitate to.
In some sense, Steve Jobs was right that people just don't read anymore--at least not like they used to. Hell, I'm a college professor and I know very few people who read even as much as I do in terms of novels and non-fiction book reading. And I only read 1-3 books a month.
Most people are at most reading for work (research articles they're reviewing or are related to something they're writing etc.) with any other reading being newspapers online, blogs etc. With most leisure time spent on TV, sports, movies, video games etc. And that's again in a highly educated set, everyone (outside of family) in my circle of friends/acquaintances I'm still in touch with either has a Ph D or is working on finishing one.
So I do think the future of mainstream e-books will be in tablets that people buy primarily for non-reading purposes, but start reading their couple books a year on. But I don't think that means the death of e-ink either. As long as there are bookworms around that just want simple devices optimized for reading there will be companies putting out e-readers to make money off that niche.
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