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Will Tablets Kill Off e-Readers?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Are e-readers doomed? A research note earlier this week from IHS iSuppli suggested that, after years of solid growth, the e-book reader market was 'on an alarmingly precipitous decline' thanks to the rise of tablets. The firm suggested that e-reader sales had declined from 23.2 million units in 2011 to 14.9 million this year — around 36 percent, in other words. The note blames tablets: 'Single-task devices like the ebook are being replaced without remorse in the lives of consumers by their multifunction equivalents, in this case by media tablets.' Even Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the reigning champs of the e-reader marketplace, have increasingly embraced full-color tablets as the best medium for selling their digital products. Backed by enormous cloud-based libraries that offer far more than just e-books, these devices are altogether more versatile than grayscale e-readers, provided their users want to do more than just read plain text."
However, I don't think that e-readers will die completely. Those hardcore people who prefer reflected light for reading books will likely cling to their devices (I'm one of them).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
The only reason I bought a Kindle is that I can't stare at a backlit tablet for hours on end.
Isn't it also reasonable to suppose that eReaders are on the decline because all the people most likely to buy them have already bought them?
No eReaders are not doomed by tablets.
eReader prices are doomed.
Bring a tablet, I'll bring my e-ink reader, and let's go sit in the sun and read for 4 hours.
Yes, they're a niche item, but it's a substantial and highly useful niche.
There is no question: anyone who spends more than a few minutes/day reading will agree reading books on LCD is really tiring. That is why I love my e-book reader, I can read for hours and my eyes won't get tired. Before it, I used to read on LCD, and after about 20 minutes my eyes would start bothering me.
On the other hand, I don't think most people read enough to be bothered by it, which is sad in many different levels. But hardcore readers won't give up their e-readers for LCD. Too bad we are a minority.
morcego
The e-Ink display gives insanely long battery life, is viewable in most light conditions and is easy on my ageing eyes. A tablet is heavy and chews through it's battery in a day.
However, web surfing on my e-reader is painful and apps/games are non-existant.
Just because they are similar looking doesn't mean they can (or should) do each other's job. Each has it's strengths and they are cheap enough that there's no need to worry about combining their roles.
Battery life.
A non-backlit ebook reader will last a very, very long time without recharging or fresh batteries. A tablet won't last through the day.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
What I want is the ten inch paper white touch screen at a reasonable price ($200 - $300 or so)
I also want the weight to be somewhat less than my ipad3.
I also want my kindle to support epub without having to do crazy side loading.
I don't use the kindle that much because it really is only useful for reading on the train and such, which I don't do that often.
I want a pony.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
A multimedia tablet with an eink capable covering would be the best of both worlds.
Speak for yourself.
I deliberately chose an ebook reader with an LCD, gleefully.
I've had it for a year now, and would not give it up willingly. Before I got the reader, I would download my ebooks in HTML format to read on my nice PC monitor.
And I'm not some young whippersnapper with good eyes....I'm 54, wearing tri-focals. I have never experienced the problems you allude to, and I am a voracious reader.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I have a couple of both.
You're right, an e-reader of the simple sort is better than a tablet for reading in a number of ways. Epaper (are we still calling it that?) is easier to read, assuming you have a light source in or near the reader. Managing the device is obviously simple... updates are pretty rare. Battery life far exceeds a tablet. They're usually much more compact. They're simple to operate and they're less expensive.
That said, I rarely use mine anymore. It's just simpler to carry around the tablet that will do whatever I want. And they've come down in price now so much that some are pretty competitively priced, compared to an ereader.
So yeah, I think tablets will all but kill the reader market. As with most tech the readers won't go away entirely. At least not for a good, long while.
We're hideously antiquated, old bean.
*adjusts monocle and top hat*
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Maybe the people who wanted an e-book reader (typically the technically minded with a great love for books) already have one?
Tablets have gone through significant upgrades, but e-book readers are very damn similar today than they were 2 years ago. They still have predominantly black and white e-ink screens of roughly the same size. They still are incredibly thin. They still have a battery life of about a month or so. There's no fast paced upgrade cycle like there is with tablets or phones.
Everyone I know with an original iPad has ditched it for the iPad 2 or the iPad !3. Yet everyone I know who bought an ebook reader more than a year ago still has that ebook reader and has no intention of upgrading.
Am I missing something? The 6th generation Kindle Wi-Fi looks very similar to the 4th gen models of yesteryear. It's hard to take the marketing of it being lighter than previous models seriously when they were already lighter than paperback novels to begin with. And as for the touch experiment, why the hell would you want touch on a Kindle? I actually know people who went out of their way not to get the Kindle touch.
I really want a large screen e-ink display for reading at work, led/lcd screens are really inferior to paper whereas e-ink screen is less so. This would be in additon to my exiting screen. The current crop of tablets really such for reading a novel or event short papers.
I have both (Kindle and Nexus 7) too. If I had bought the tablet first, I wouldn't haven't bought the Kindle. While reading text on the Kindle IS nicer than on the tablet, reading PDFs on the Kindle is a nightmare -- the page renders are slow and hard to make out, and moving around on a page isn't exactly a breeze. A PDF on the tablet is totally straightforward and renders perfectly.
What would be interesting however, would be a tablet with an Epaper touch display. Most of my beef with the Kindle is that for PDF applications, it is slow and clunky. Take that away by giving the device some processing power and a good resolution, plus the ability to run other apps, and the only downside to Epaper would be a lack of color. In other words, an Android tablet with an Epaper display might be interesting -- not for games -- but for reading the web, books, documents, emails, and stuff like that.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Leatherman killed the tool market when it came out. Why buy a single-purpose tool when you can get many more features for a little bit more money?
Sometimes having something that *doesn't* slice, dice, and julienne fries is the better choice. I mean, sure, I could do many small repairs using just a leatherman, but a nice set of wrenches and drivers makes working on my bike *much* nicer. Or how about crescent wrenches (or shifting spanners, as the case may be)? You can handle all variety of nuts, bolts, and fittings. SAE, metric, square, hex? All are open to you. Yet anyone who spends much time working on mechanical things knows that a crescent wrench, while convenient, is often vastly inferior to a good set of wrenches.
When I'm out on a ride, I carry a small multitool that *does* do a bunch of things in one small, inexpensive, unobtrusive package, just as when I'm out and about, I can get some reading done on my Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 is convenient, but if I ever broke my e-ink Kindle, I'd have a replacement ordered that very day. E-ink readers are basically designed to fill the niche of "electronic trade paperback for avid readers". They fill that niche exceedingly well, and avid readers are a renewable resource.
eReaders are dirt cheap. They can probably be considered a loss leader. They're there to enable the sale of content. They are the proverbial razor handle. They will likely never go away because of this.
They simply don't need to compete as an independent product.
So market forces likely won't cause them to go away.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So maybe the right answer is a tablet... with an Epaper screen on the back.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Read on paper? Insane tree murderer!
The problem with E-readers is that there seems to be very little MUST-UPGRADE-NOW mentality in the users. There is no real reason for me to buy the latest-and-greatest E-ink reader when my current device works just fine.
Compare this to a smartphone/computer/tablet. Most people I know wait for their contract to expire and get a new "free" phone immediately. I know people who get new laptops every 3-4 years. Both from a hardware and software point of view, upgrading offers significant benefits for these devices (I can't personally speak about tablets, having never owned one). For some devices, the software upgrades aren't available on older devices (either due to a hardware limitation, or to get people to upgrade their devices).
I bought a Kindle DX soon after it was launched, and I have a smartphone. The collections "feature" was the latest good update I recollect for my Kindle. Sure, it might be nice to have lighting on the device, but I can just get a clip on light if I really want to. My Kindle DX is a device I use regularly, but unless they make great software improvements in handling PDF documents/improved page refresh, I don't see any reason to upgrade (especially since I don't really care for a smaller E-reader).
My phone on the other hand runs Gingerbread (flashed my own ROM), and I don't think it can support the latest Android OS. It doesn't have two cameras, or the best sound, or the fastest hardware. So I clearly see the benefit of upgrading to a new phone.
E-readers seem to be like toasters/microwaves - if it works, I'm not going to buy a new one. They are, in a way, dull devices. A tablet/smartphone is like a car. Sure, last year's model might be sufficient, but this year's model gives some improvements that (while not central to what I want a phone for) make it feel that upgrading is worth it.
Because they can be got for $90-150 plus tax, delivered? And hold thousands of books, magazines, reference documents, play games, browse the Internet, provide video chat, play Netflix, work with Office documents and such, have an accessible library of 600,000 apps - most free? For $90?
It's not like the price is a huge barrier to entry. You can get a pretty decent Android tablet for under $150 now. Go ahead: treat yourself.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And my E-book reader can go two weeks (of heavy usage) on a charge (you don't even need to turn it off!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I have a Kindle Paperwhite. Before that, I had a Nook and a Kindle Touch. Before that, I had a first-gen iPad. Way before that, I had a Compaq iPAQ on which I once read Dracula, so I'm counting it here.
Reading ebooks on the dedicated eReaders is superior to a first-gen iPad (and the iPAQ, natch). However, I recently got a new (retina) iPad, and, well...in some ways it's better than the Kindle. Despite the lighting and battery issues, the iPad has clearer text. This is a combination of vastly superior contrast, perfect screen refreshes, higher DPI, and a more even backlight. It also switches pages faster than a Kindle, and thanks to the perfect refresh, it never has text artifacts (you can enable this in the Kindle, too, but the screen flickers black every page turn and it eats up battery faster).
The Kindle, though, still has some advantages. You don't need to look at it straight-on; it's clear from any angle. Its battery lasts longer, though I find I still need to recharge every 7-10 days. There's less eyestrain--but I think a better way to describe that is it's slightly easier for me to focus on the text than it is on an LCD. The device weighs less, and I can easily hold it in my hand (I could probably do this with an iPad mini or a 7" tablet). You can read it in direct sunlight--in fact, it looks better this way!
The point to all this is that tablets have made strides in the eReader field. They used to suck, but they've gotten quite a bit better. I wouldn't be surprised if they supplant the dedicated readers altogether at some point. They're good enough for most people. I think the ideal situation would be an LCD/eInk hybrid screen, an idea that has seen something of a resurgence of late.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I charged my kindle a few weeks ago; and read for about 4 hours last night and most nights previous. That's not abnormal for it, I've gone a month or more without charging it when I was only able to find a few series in paper form. Just got about 30 free books from amazon yesterday, so I might have to charge it next week some time.
Frankly, I've tried reading on my phone, and the backlit display just doesn't help my already bad eyes. I can get by with it when I have to, but the paper-like display of a non-lit e-ink reflecting light from a nice warm LED bulb is just more comfortable.
That's a good example as to how eink is pricing itself out of a market. It's taken years of being difficult to get hold of a non-kindle eink device and now LCD tablets have taken the niche that could have been filled with cheap eink devices four or five years ago.
Until tablets come out with a display that can be as easy on the eyes and a battery that lasts 2 months, I don't think I'll be ditching my e-reader.
If you travel though, it's one less charger to bring.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323339704578173173413977046.html Its a phone with two screens one with e-ink the other lcd. Its...interesting.
This is why I think E-Readers are doomed. My family and friends that like books like more than the LOOK of the book, they like the feel, they like the smell, they like being able to just chunk it around, dog ear a page, etc. Whereas those that like digital devices will naturally like something that can read AND surf AND check their email AND watch videos.
If the price of E-Ink had dropped a LOT faster, if they would have come up with even 16 bit color, then maybe E-Readers would have some life left, but when you can get a 1.2Ghz Cortex A8 tablet with ICS for $80-$100? Well its obvious to me which one is gonna be the winner. Mark my words, tablets with dual core CPUs for less than $60 this time next year for a 7 inch, which will be the final nail in the coffin.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.