2015 was the worst yr ever for e-readers

e-Reader innovation has floor to a halt and no new know-how has been developed since 2013. This was the worst yr on report when it comes to total gross sales. Many analysts have proclaimed that solely 9 million models have shipped this yr, which is a lower from the 12 million devoted e-ink gadgets had been bought in 2014 and a far cry from 20 million models that had been bought in 2011.

The e-reader trade is crashing

There are various the reason why main firms like Amazon and Barnes and Noble solely shipped one new e-reader this yr and Kobo debuted two new fashions. It’s the identical motive why there have been no new 13.3 inch e-readers in 2015, though Onyx and Pocketbook each teased they’d one in improvement, however they’re nowhere to be discovered.

I feel the primary motive why the e-reader trade is in a state of decline is because of the market turning into tremendous saturated between 2009 to 2012. Mainly anybody who needed an e-reader went out and purchased one throughout that timeframe.  There’s little motive to spend money on a brand new mannequin yearly, as a result of there isn’t any quantum leaps in know-how, its been completely stagnant.

The second motive is primarily attributed to e-Reader possession hitting an all time low. Pew Analysis performed a examine and located 19% of adults reported proudly owning an e-reader, corresponding to a Kindle or Nook.This can be a sizable drop from early 2014, when 32% of adults owned one of these gadget. It appears as if folks have shelved their readers and switched to smartphones and tablets.

Pew discovered that 45% of U.S. adults personal a pill – a considerable enhance since they started measuring pill possession in 2010. Then, solely 4% of adults within the U.S. had been pill homeowners. Additionally they acknowledged that 68% of adults now have a smartphone, almost double from 2011 when solely 35% of adults had a smartphone.

The Wall Road Journal additionally reported this summer time that the smartphone continued to be essentially the most adopted piece of know-how to learn e-books. Their premise derived from a current Nielsen survey of two,000 individuals who discovered  54% of e-book consumers mentioned they used smartphones to learn their books not less than among the time, which is a 24% enhance from 2012.

There are just a few e-reader firms left standing

When Good e-Reader first began reporting on the rise of e-readers and e-books in 2008, the world was nice. Inside a couple of brief years there have been dozens of e-reader and e-paper firms trying to make their mark on the trade.

In 2015 there are just a few firms left standing. The one firm who’s lively in e-paper is E-Ink Holdings.  Pixel QI, LG and Bridgestone all deserted their e-paper ambitions a couple of years in the past due the perceived lack of demand.  In the meantime within the e-reader sector dozens of firms went out of enterprise in the previous few years, corresponding to Cool-ER, Entourage, Hanvon, iRex, Greenbook, Spring Design, Kyobo and dozens of others.

There are solely two main firms left standing within the e-reader area and towards all odds they’ve managed to flourish.. Amazon has the most important market share and so they account for 75% of all e-books bought within the US, whereas within the UK the determine is nearer to 95%.

The second main international participant needs to be Kobo. The corporate has been on an increasing rampage, making an attempt to dominate markets earlier than Amazon can swoop in. Considered one of their greatest secrets and techniques to their success is getting their gadgets in bookstores, the place their potential clients are. Michael Tamblyn – CEO of Kobo advised me on a couple of events that they give attention to bookstores as a result of their product appears extra natural and healthful, as a substitute of being bought at an enormous field retailer, the place know-how is usually chilly and impersonal. 

What’s an e-reader dialogue with out the Barnes and Noble Nook?  The corporate launched a brand new waterproof e-reader this yr, the primary new mannequin since 2013.

Barnes and Noble has misplaced cash on the Nook side for the final 4 years straight. In whole, they’ve misplaced over 1.2 billion {dollars} on having an excessive amount of stock and promoting too few models. They thought they might clear up this drawback by contracting out the pill design to Samsung.

The primary drawback with the most important bookstore chain in the US is that they completely refuse to enter into new markets and promote digital content material. This not solely hurts them, however leaves a few of their clients in a quagmire. For instance, digital library distributor Overdrive sources their digital journal assortment and pupil newspapers from from Barnes and Noble. As a result of B&N solely sells it within the US, it limits Overdrives functionality to promote this type of content material in different markets. It additionally forces them to search out one other accomplice simply to promote magazines in nations like Canada or the UK.

Whereas Amazon and Kobo dominated the worldwide stage, there are solely a handful of key regional gamers which have any form of gross sales report and established buyer base.  Some of the well-known is Tolino, which contains of an alliance of telecom and tech firms that needed to develop e-readers and open a digital bookstore to forestall Amazon from dominating the German market. Netherlands primarily based Icarus has a fond place in geeks hearts as a result of they had been one of many first ones to develop open Android primarily based e-readers, that assist you to set up apps similar to you’ll on a smartphone and pill. Pocketbook tends to dominate Japanese Europe, whereas Vitality Sistem does effectively in Spain and eventually Onyx Boox who primarily focuses on the profitable Chinese language market.

2016 will likely be higher

I’m hoping there will likely be plenty of new applied sciences that can debut in 2016, that can assist revitalize the e-reader trade.

In June 2015 Freescale introduced the IMX 7 twin core processor, which will likely be included into most new e-readers in 2016. This chip was designed by each e Ink and Freescale.  It was mainly developed to provide you a greater expertise utilizing Carta, Regal or Pearl screens, however was primarily made for no matter new e-paper tech e-ink comes out with in 2016.

E-Ink must also announce Regal 2 in 2016, which is able to work along side the brand new Freescale processor. It is going to lastly make Android pushed e-readers extra viable as a result of refreshing pace will likely be elevated by a couple of hundred %, which is able to make advanced animations, corresponding to animated web page turns extra viable. Search for this to be introduced at SID Show Week.

Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Put up and the New York Instances have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.