Will E-Readers be gone by 2020?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by afa

I'm also not sure about recordable CDs/DVDs:

True enough to an extent, I suppose, but that's not all that discs do. They can also serve as a method of backup, a throwing weapon for use in house burglaries, and a Frisbee for when you're bored.

And what about music? Unless he is also suggesting that car stereos will have progressed to the point where they, too, can access the cloud, I might still need my recorded music on a disc. "iPod connectivity!" I hear you say. Sure, many stereos have that; but I prefer the cleaner look and feel of being able to insert discs inside my stereo, as opposed to having wires snaking about my car for the auxiliary input. Or maybe they'll start including dock connectors in the centre glove box? Cool idea, but that would then require all manufacturers of portable music players to use the same type of connector.

Simple, two replacements:
1. USB. USB ports can already be found in modern car stereos.
2. SD Cards (normal or micro): also can already be found in some modern car stereos.

Both devices have distinct advantages over CD's and DVD's. They're more easily written and re-written. They take less space. They are less likely to stop working.

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Yes, I think dedicated ereaders will be gone by 2020. I predict some kind of eink/LCD hybrid where the backlight can be turned on or off depending on the lighting conditions around you. If a tablet was as easy on the eyes as today's ereader, and just as cheap, and came in a variety of sizes, why would you buy an ereader?

Someone bump this thread in 2020 please.

eP

This is what I think too. I mean, compare even the very first Amazon Kindle with the latest incarnation. You can do more with the newest that has nothing to do with reading than you could with the first incarnation. And once technology like PixelQi really breaks through, you'll see more merging between tablets and dedicated readers.

[frostschutz]

It's 20:20 somewhere 24 times a day Anyhow. If there's something better, sure, readers will go. Otherwise they'll stay. We'd still be carrying around CD players if we didn't have fingernail sized mp3 players that can hold hundreds of cds worth of music in their place.

If there is ever a display that combines the strengths of lcd and eink without adding (m)any of their downsides, sure we'll have a tablet/smartphone with that and not worry about dedicated devices for every task anymore.

I don't think we will have such a display by 2020 though. Eink has been around for quite a while now and the progress is rather slow. There's a lot of marketing buzz (pearl screens etc.) but very little in the way of real breakthroughs.

I hope that CD/DVD/Bluray/HDD (anything that rotates) will be gone by 2020 though. Flash/SSD storage is better. Internet streaming is better. I'd like to be able to buy movies online same way it works for games (Steam etc) today. Full quality of course.

[tmclough]

From what I can gather from the article, they're predicting that dedicated devices will die out, and be replaced by one-size-fits-all, jack-of-all-trades,-master-of-none devices. Also, most of the replacements seem to already exist; nothing new will come out to replace them.

That said, some of us will still prefer devices that do one thing (or several, closely related things) and do it (them) well.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by tmclough

From what I can gather from the article, they're predicting that dedicated devices will die out, and be replaced by one-size-fits-all, jack-of-all-trades,-master-of-none devices. Also, most of the replacements seem to already exist; nothing new will come out to replace them.

That said, some of us will still prefer devices that do one thing (or several, closely related things) and do it (them) well.

I hate when someone tries to design something to combine the best of everything. It usually doesn't work well. Take the GM Avalanche. Is it a truck or an SUV? It is neither and does not do either as well as the original.
Apache

[afa]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Simple, two replacements:
1. USB. USB ports can already be found in modern car stereos.
2. SD Cards (normal or micro): also can already be found in some modern car stereos.

Both devices have distinct advantages over CD's and DVD's. They're more easily written and re-written. They take less space. They are less likely to stop working.

Less likely? I've had multiple USBs go corrupt and leave me hanging, but I've never had a CD stop working (unless I threw it around a few times and scratched it relentlessly).

And I thought USBs and SD cards were prone to be ruined if left in the sun (a real world concern in my part of the world)? If that's true, then it makes it a no-go for me.

But in-car cloud streaming would be pretty cool, actually. Someone should get on that.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Eh. Dedicated e-readers'll stick around as a major component of the e-reading market until new screen technology comes along that tablets can use that won't hurt the eyes when reading text for a long time.

I agree with this. The question is whether this will happen by 2020!

I have a bet on with 3bayjunkie on this topic.

Interestingly, the break-even point on our bet is 2023.

I think we will see a good tablet/ereader combo before 2020. But I don't know if it will have actually displaced mainstream ereaders completely. I think it certainly will have done so my 2030.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by frostschutz

I don't think we will have such a display by 2020 though. Eink has been around for quite a while now and the progress is rather slow. There's a lot of marketing buzz (pearl screens etc.) but very little in the way of real breakthroughs.

My current favourite for this in the very near future is Mirasol.

[elcreative]

And this'll be as accurate as all predications tend to be... still, amusing for some and outright war for others... bring it on...

[allinhi/]

I really doubt dedicated readers will disappear that fast, unless development stops. By 2030 maybe. I suspect integrated media devices will exist by then. Probably braclet and earpiece devices, possibly tethered to a tablet. Those growing up now will prefer to be always connected, shrinking the market for dedicated ereaders.

[stonetools]

Here is an intersting take:

Kindle Fire stealing Kindle’s thunder?
Posted on October 7, 2011 by switch11
The Kindle Fire is supposedly selling at the rate of 25,000 devices per day. It’s supposedly selling more than all the other new Kindles combined.

The natural question that comes up is – Is Kindle Fire going to turn Kindle the eReader into an afterthought?

If you’re Amazon you leverage the ‘Kindle’ brand and make it stronger and sell a ton of Tablets and now people can buy movies and games and music in addition to books.

In a way, it does. If you want a dedicated reading device that keeps improving and evolving, then you have to wonder about what happens if this trend continues – if Kindle Fire keeps outselling all other Kindles combined, if it becomes what people think of when they think ‘Kindle’.

Amazon has shifted from ‘eInk is better for reading than LCD’ to selling both eInk and LCD devices. The lines are getting blurred and we don’t really know what future it’s going to lead us to.

There is a possibility that we’ve finally gotten a Kindle Killer - it’s strange that it’s the Kindle Fire. The rest of 2011 is going to be very interesting and 2012 even more so. Barclays is very optimistic and thinks 23.5 million eInk Kindles will be sold in 2012 and that eInk Kindles will outsell Kindle Fire in 2012. However, user interest and search trends and news coverage are telling a very different story.

LINK

The reviewer made the point elsewhere that everybody said sales of the Kindle would skyrocket once we get to the $99 price point. Well, we got to the $79 price point-yet the overwhelming interest is in the $199 tablet!

I think there are a lot of folks whose head is with e-ink for reading experience, but their heart is with tablets, for the many other things that a tablet can do.

[jgaiser]

As soon as I read the name Rob Enderle, I knew the whole report was a stinking pile...

(You need to be a hardcore Linux geek, who followed the SCO/Linux wars to understand).

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Originally Posted by afa

Just saw an article on Yahoo! (though it's sourced from something called ManStreet) that gives a list of current tech products that they feel will be gone and dusted by the end of the decade. One of the five items listed is -- yes, you guessed it -- the dedicated e-reader.



I'm guessing a fair few of my fellow MobileReaders will take umbrage with that...

Here's the article: http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/y...around-in-2020

Ya know, maybe I'm in the minority, but I think they're wrong about several of those things.

On the subject of ereaders, I think there's a real chance they will change significantly and maybe become less popular as more eye-friendly screens that refresh and colorize better become available.

But I love having a dedicated reader. I love not having any distractions while I read, and feeling like I at least have one device on which I never do any work - all I do with it is enjoy myself.

I had ideas about using my ereader for school when I first got it, but now... I'm finding that I don't want to. I like it being my escape device. I do work on all my other devices and it's nice to escape that on my ereader. It makes everything feel less hectic when I'm not distracted by that. I even run my KT in "airplane mode" all the time, because I don't *want* to be online while I'm using it.

I don't think feature phones will go away either. The same way that even when the RAZR was around, people still had "brick phones." There will always be people who don't want, need, or can't afford the latest tech.

I also disagree that netbooks have been replaced by tablets. I will never replace my netbook with a tablet. I'm a writer. And tablets are useless for the kind of output that I do. I've thought about having dual-boot for my touchscreen netbook, with Android being one of the boots, but that's the closest I'll ever get to owning a tablet. And I still see a lot more people with small notebookes/netbooks than with tablets. Tablets are even less popular than ereaders, and ereaders are about as popular as netbooks, so I don't know where they get this idea that netbooks are being "replaced."

I think typical CD's/DVD's will be replaced, but not by clouds or HDD's, or any of that stuff. They'll be replaced by another kind of disk. I forget what they're called (found it! link: Millenniata disks), but there are these new disks in the works that store digital content and *never* degrade.

That is a huge advantage over USB drives, HDD's, SD cards, etc. All of those things degrade over time and need to be replaced every few years or you lose your data. And I, for one, will be moving to using those when they become available. I think a lot of other people will too. Permanent back-ups with no risk of corruption? Hell yes.

[astra]

Will E-Readers be gone by 2020?

Probably

Will ebook readers be gone by 2020?
Not unless we get WWIII.

[xg4bx]

personally i dont care how they package it, i dont want a tablet. i dont want all in one devices. i want to cherry pick what i want not be told what i want and need.

how incredibly boring the world will be when all of our entertainments are on one device.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

personally i dont care how they package it, i dont want a tablet. i dont want all in one devices. i want to cherry pick what i want not be told what i want and need.

how incredibly boring the world will be when all of our entertainments are on one device.