With the announcement of the $99 Ocean Reader Copia Tablet we are entering familiar territory. As you probably remember, netbooks went through the same race to the bottom as ebooks and this Ocean Reader is the first of the lot to hit our shores with any fanfare.
While I’m sure a mention in the WSJ is fairly important, the Copia and the Alex and the Farfenugen or whatever is next to ride down the ereader/tablet pike will enter a strange market. There are currently two – if not three – popular platforms. I’d say the Kindle is far and away the most robust followed by the Sony ereaders beloved by PDF downloaders and trailed by the Nook whose viability I’m bearish on. While a multi-purpose device like the Streak can exist in this ecosystem, any ereader that advertises itself as primarily an ereader will be sunk.
Here’s how it will shake out: small companies will started getting catalogs from China describing the possible types of LCD and eink readers available for export. These companies will, in hopes of grabbing some holiday bucks, advertise their products at lower and lower prices. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a $25 ereader by November. These ereaders will be woefully useless and Kindle sales will rise after snookered readers return these junk devices. We’ll see a trickle of no name ereaders next year and then it will stop, the cheap ereader supplanted by the fuller featured Windows 7, iOS, or Android Tablet while Amazon will still make money selling Kindles to the more literary-minded. Nooks? Well, we’ll see.
I don’t think ereaders can survive the race to the bottom. They serve a far too specific purpose to last very long and, unlike netbooks, there are no virulent pro-junk ereader owners out there. At best they’re indifferent and at worst they’re disappointed by the ebook selections available to them.
Make no mistake: I predict the death of the independent bookstore within the next half decade and the death of the big chains in ten years. I also predict a huge, MPAA-like scare on behalf of the publishing world once they figure out that all these ereaders are encouraging book piracy. However, once students get used to reading long-form content on a screen and carry that habit into their casual reading, there will be no reason to drag around a hardback of Stephen King. Heck, the pessimist in me says we won’t even see long form text in about twenty years, but I won’t go as far as announce the death of the book.
Anyway, don’t buy the Ocean Reader for your mom this holiday. It will just frustrate her. Buy a Kindle. You’ll be happier.
Could you possibly be a bit more overt in your Kindle-shilling? “Buy a Kindle, IDIOTS!”
Dude. I’ve had them since the beginning and I’ve consistently had the best experience. I only get $5000 a month from them in my personal bank account, so it’s completely unbiased.
Honestly, Amazon has it sewn up. B&N was late and they won’t catch up.
+1 for having a sense of humor about it. I take it back, you’re not a shill, just a shameless fanboy. :) When I finally buy a reader (soon, I hope), I’ll probably buy the books via Kindle, but I’m just not sold on having a tablet that only reads books (plus a few specialty functions).
Oh, neither am I. However, plenty of people are
So… what makes one junk and not the other? If they have the same screen, some similar hardware, etc? You only reference “robustness”. Your readers wonder, though, how to distinguish the junk from the value (assuming we’re not brand loyalists receiving $5K into our personal bank accts each month :) )
It’s the bookstore. I’d say even the iPad is a “bad” ereader experience except that it supports iBooks, Kindle, and B&N. IF – and only if – an ereader supports Kindle and B&N stores via an Android app then it is to be considered. Anyone who tries to sell you their own ebook store will eventually disappoint.
The Pirate bay has a pretty robust book store. Great prices too. Never once have I been disappointed.
eReaders are only as good as the content behind them. Until more publishers embrace the ePub format and don’t go through established online services, these knockoffs will not really get anywhere. Unlike knockoff MP3 players, there isn’t a lot of content and people will realize this.
I’ll stick with my iPad and stores from Amazon, B&N, Borders and Apple.
Bittorrent is flooded with content you can put on one of these cheap ereaders
“I predict the death of the independent bookstore within the next half decade and the death of the big chains in ten years.”
Um, really? MP3s have been around since the early 90s and there are still TONS of independent cd and record stores. Records! I feel the same thing will happen with books. Sure, eReaders will continue to grow and be more popular, but the regular book will never die. People are too devoted to the format, which has been around since man could first write.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle and I rarely, if ever, read regular books, but even I can realize this comment about bookstores dying is ridiculous, especially in just 10 years.
You don’t think an e-reader can compete by offering compatibility with epub and other non-DRM formats? After all, while none do nearly as well as the iPod there are still tons and tons of mp3 players out there that don’t use the iTunes store
Music is readily available in non-DRM formats (Rip a CD or ‘you know’ ;)). Books aren’t the same, you can’t buy a book and rip it to PDF or other format. So you can’t reapply compare them.
‘really’ stupid autocorrect
They should be a race to the bottom. Paper is a commodity, screens should be a commodity, too cheap to meter!
After all, an ereader is simply a substitute for paper, much like an mp3 player was a substitute for tape. You do not need these devices to be multifunction do-it-alls if they are super lightweight, portable, and ultra cheap.
If you can ship an ereader that costs $30, I would have a problem using it as a single function device.
What’s bizarre about TC, is they constantly trumpet Apple’s attempts to reduce general purpose devices and substitute them with simpler ones (Computer/Laptop/Netbook vs iPad), yet they still want these uber do everything mobile devices.
If electronic paper costs $30-50, I don’t care if about having multiple, I’ll just buy a few of them and leave one next to the bed, and one at the office, and I won’t have to lug around a huge, heavy, battery draining iPad everywhere.
You are the first person I’ve heard who believes the iPad is “huge” & “heavy”
Compared to the Kindle, it’s heavy. Compared to what I want, which is Minority Report style screens, light as paper, you can roll them up, cheap to the point of disposable, and no fear of scratching or shattering them.
The iPad *is* bulky, bulky enough that I leave mine at home. I carry my phone everywhere, but the iPad is too large, too heavy, and too delicate to keep it with me all the time.
Personally, I think the end point of this stuff is commodification. Super cheap mobile screens with wireless and a browser, it’s all most people need unless you’re a gamer. HTML5 for the rest.
The era of specialized devices running native code will eventually end, sooner or later. The entire world is not going to be running off of iPads.
Commodification is inevitable. Even today, commodity rules for PCs, Notebooks, and phones. Apple is making a killing, but their devices are still a tiny marketshare.
I would agree that the iPad is large and heavy in comparison to my Kindle DX. That’s definitely one reason I’d rather use my Kindle for book reading than my iPad.
” I also predict a huge, MPAA-like scare on behalf of the publishing world once they figure out that all these ereaders are encouraging book piracy.”
This is the most important sentence that few people are yet talking about. The reality is that once I got my Kindle the first thing I figured out how to do was get freely available epub versions of books I already owned (I felt justified, “why should I buy them again?”). Also there are plenty of classics that are pre-1923 and thus they are free anyway. It was a pretty quick self taught “how to” lesson.
However, it’s a very slippery slope and I’d hate to see authorship as a profession disappear in 10 years because we don’t protect the IP. I am personally guilty of hastening the trend, but I do not want to be. I hope they get on this soon and come out with a workable go forward model to protect this medium (BTW, I’d be happy to rip off the covers of most of my already bought books and send them in for the rights to the epub/DRM’d version for my Kindle).
You are so wrong, I can barely put it into words – but I’ll try!
Kindle is a market leader, but it isn’t special enough. The Apple IPad is also a market leader, but isn’t known as an ebook reader, even though it does the job quite well.
What will actually happen is that the Android tablet will take over both markets, and what you end up with is an ebook, you can surf the net on – perfect!
Books will never disappear, but I think you are right that book shops are in grave danger. However, the online book shop has a great future because books don’t need batteries, and can’t be deleted, and can be lent to your mates, and can be used as a something else when the need arises – none of which can be done with an ebook / tablet gadget!
oh, and you are a fan boy – not good ;)
F0ul: you are so right here:
What will actually happen is that the Android tablet will take over both markets, and what you end up with is an ebook, you can surf the net on – perfect!
Like I said in a prior comment:
Who died and made you king maker of e-readers?
Lets face it: competition is a good thing.
The introduction of various types of e-readers (crappy or not) will mean availability to a broad spectrum of users and reduction in price.
Choice -especially if the appliance is open source based- means that the consumer wins, ultimately.
Now, the question for the new e-readers should be:
1. How open can they be?
2. Can they give the user the ability to customize the internals and really be put to work?
I am sure someone is working on this.
Amazon blew it. They should have set the new Kindle price at $50 IF you buy ten books at the same time. Take a loss on the device, make some of it up on selling ten eBooks per person, and cry all the way to the bank once those millions of people finish their initial ten books and flood the Amazon store with new purchases. This would have thrown everyone else RIGHT out of the market.
Kindle does not support library books, until then it’s a “fail” for many people despite it’s suscess. I’ve had the Sony 505 for a couple of years and just picked up a Nook.
Being able to check out library books and not having to purchase every sinlge book is huge. Sure some are cheap or free, but new releases typically are not. I buy about half and check out the other half of books I read.
If Amazon started suporting ePub (adept DRM whatnot) I would serioulsy consider that slick new Kindle. Until then I don’t want to be locked into only their bookstore and I dont want to deal with “hacking” all the time.
Most of the new eBooks are supporting ePub.
Just my random thoughts on the topic.
We just need a ereader that is capable of displaying text books and I have a feeling that it will not be Amazon, Apple or B&N.
Most people will never buy a ereader so the cheaper they are the better to get them to the masses.
The only books the majority of people have are
Religious Book (Bible, Koran, Tanakh, Avesta, Sruti)
Education Books (school, college) if school they have to be returned and not all people keep their college books so those don’t count.
Cook Book
Dictionary
TV Guide
So really their are own two books that are found in most homes their religions book and a cook book. There will have to be a very compelling reason to get one.
I hate my Mom’s Kindle, but it is version 1.0 and she finds good usage in it, so I guess it works for her.
I’ve been messing around with buying book apps for my iPod Touch. I really liked this one– http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/you-cant-always-get-what-you/id365685513?mt=8 because it has an audiobook feature and offers videos/photos instead of just text.
30 million netbooks were sold in 2009, and 60 million are expected to be sold in 2010, so they’re a big part of the race to the bottom line of Microsoft. People, from the halls of American high schools to the townships in South Africa, see the value in netbooks. Looks like Amazon will have the same success with the Kindle as Microsoft is having with netbooks.
Your pessimism is annoying. There should be a race to the bottom for prices of this device. Seth Godin has written extensively about the need for a “paperback” ereader – i.e. something extremely inexpensive. Money should be made by selling content, not the device. As for the death of bookstores, like all good businesses, they’ll find ways to change with the times.
An e-book reader (a terrible term, but I’ve yet to come up with a better one) is a tool. When I buy a tool I expect it to do the job for which it was designed and for which I purchased it.
If, for example, I purchase a chisel, I purchase a chisel – not something that will, at a click or rotation, suddenly turn into a screwdriver or (heaven forbid) yet another timepiece.
At the moment I’m in the market for a reasonably priced device which will display digitally formatted books in a clear and unambiguous manner (‘imminent’ comes to mind). My main criterion is that I should be able to ‘download’ text from a site (presumably I will pay for that) using my existing and paid for bandwidth and then ‘upload’ same to the ‘reader’.
I have no desire to be connected to some form of ’3G’ network – I don’t even have a mobile ‘phone never mind Wi-Fi or Wii. Why? Well it’s because I don’t need them.
The Nook is pretty nice actually. You can read books – any ebook — for free at the B&N stores. And the reader is sturdy and easy to read — unlike trying to read a book on an IPAD which I equate to trying to read a novel on my blackberry — you can’t do it.
Kindle is #1, but the Nook is right behind it.