Information Week: e-Book Readers Need To Get A Lot Cheaper

[ekaser]

An interesting article in Information Week:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=219501468

Based on a study, e-book readers would have to be $50 "to reach the widest range of U.S. consumers."

"With an optimal price point below the cost of the components, e-readers will require some form of price subsidy to attain more mass-market reach," the study, authored by Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, said.

"The majority of consumers don't care enough about reading or technology to invest in this type of single-purpose device at anything close to realistic prices," the study said.

[HarryT]

Reading is not a "mass" interest. I think it's unrealistic to expect eBook readers to ever achieve the type of market penetration that, say, MP3 players have.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Reading is not a "mass" interest. I think it's unrealistic to expect eBook readers to ever achieve the type of market penetration that, say, MP3 players have.

If a reader is very cheap than it can be used for all reading and eveybody read some text each day.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Reading is not a "mass" interest.

For pleasure? It certainly isn't.

But reading is "mass", and pretty basic, need. Textbooks, business-related material... elimination of paper (elimination of "printing" as a delay and inconvenience) is inevitable.

[jackau]

With big taiwan panel makers taking over the likes of E-ink, the dozens of brands and ODMs are eyeing ebook as their next money maker for the next three years.

We can assume when the likes of LCD display ODM AUO gear their production lines on Ebook screen, bigger and cheaper Ebooks will be just a year or two away.

estimate by 2011, 7 inch screen products dominates market at low end and 9 inch is aiming for main stream. 11 inch / a4 size are top end. Low end start from 75 (5 to 6 inch) to 150 USD, and top of the line asking for 300 + USD.

Then around 2013. Colour (16 bit?) screen Ebooks will take off as high end. What is still unknown was whether the nontech heavy mainstream would paid 200+ USD for a coloured 9 to 10 inch Ebook reader.

We expect to see odd ones such as Netbook + Ebook offerings, namely the one seen released by Asus, or have a large E-book screen attached on the panel cover of light weight notebooks / netbooks...

At this stage, i do not expect coloured version Ebook to reach the 100 USD mark by 2013since the first coloured reader by Fujitsu was asking for 1000 USD!

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Reading is not a "mass" interest. I think it's unrealistic to expect eBook readers to ever achieve the type of market penetration that, say, MP3 players have.

If you notice, the big problem with reading - as opposed to music - is that you can readily find cheap, easy-to-use music players (Hell, some of them are built right into cell phones! ) and cheap music to play on them.

Now I'll grant you that you *can* read using a cell-phone, iPod Touch or pda, but they're not the most comfortable for longer works.

Instead, readers who wish a light-weight ebook reader are forced to shell out between $200 and $700 and then must turn around and shell out anywhere from $6 to $26 for a novel.

As long as e-ink and oLED readers are so expensive and the books both expensive and difficult to read across reading platforms, you're gonna find e-reading nowhere near as popular as listening to music.

Derek

[Hellmark]

Isn't this a duplicate of https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55488 ? Different articles, but both are about the same Forrester research study.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ankh

For pleasure? It certainly isn't.

But reading is "mass", and pretty basic, need. Textbooks, business-related material... elimination of paper (elimination of "printing" as a delay and inconvenience) is inevitable.

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Isn't this a duplicate of https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55488 ? Different articles, but both are about the same Forrester research study.

Yep, and yep.