When Sony and Amazon first acquired into the e-reader enterprise, they had been thought-about a brand new breed of luxurious gadgets. The primary technology Kindle retailed for $399 and the PRS-500 was $349. For sure, solely essentially the most hardcore of readers had been shopping for into the brand new strategy to devour digital books. In the previous couple of years, you’ll be able to choose up a extremely fashionable machine for $79. Whats modified?
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo are within the race to the underside. They’re forgoing a lot of crucial options to have the ability to compete in opposition to one another within the profitable US and UK market. General construct high quality is struggling, web shopping has by no means improved and the shortage of audio bucks the pattern of technological convergence.
In 2011, we began to see e-readers come down in value. The Kindle Keyboard was massively discounted from $189 to $99. Barnes and Noble discounted their Easy Contact Reader to $99 and Kobo did the identical. This was the final 12 months that we noticed a brand new reader have audio system and a 3.5mm headphone jack that was able to enjoying audiobooks and music recordsdata.
The dearth of audio in fashionable e-readers forestall them from being rolled out into faculties and establishments of studying. The chief motive is as a result of visually disabled folks can not use the gadgets and really feel excluded. The Nationwide Federation of the Blind have been overzealous on this regard and have prevented Amazon from beginning pilot tasks to get e-readers in faculties. They went so far as organizing protests proper outdoors Amazons Seattle headquarters, saying on the time “no scholar ought to be left behind.”
The e-reader business as a complete has misplaced most of its revolutionary spirit, the overwhelming majority of firms that had been round from 2007 to 2011 will not be round anymore. There was some really attention-grabbing e-paper expertise that might have modified the sport, resembling Bridgestone e-paper, Liquavista, LG, Mirasol, Pixel QI, and Plastic Logic. The explanation why most of those firms deserted the e-reader area, was as a result of the entire notable gamers had been threat adversarial. After bringing the entry stage value from $399 to $99 for an e-reader, the worth might by no means dramatically improve once more, which restricted their choices of coping with new firms, whose expertise could be costly to fabricate at first.
The race to the underside has not solely restricted shopper choices, but it surely has successfully edged out smaller firms that provide different e-readers. Icarus, Onyx Boox, Pocketbook and Wexler aren’t precisely family names, however have been making e-readers in Jap Europe, Russia and China for years. All of those guys initially centered on the western market, however they merely couldn’t produce sufficient items, in an effort to get huge reductions on the manufacturing facility, which successfully relegated them to markets the place Amazon and Kobo haven’t entered but.
I’ve been following the e-reader business because the first technology Sony and Kindle e-readers. I used to be at CES in 2010 when e-readers had been in all places, there have been literary a whole bunch of firms desirous to enter the area, in search of strategic companion. In 2011, there have been hardly any to be discovered, because the business gravitated in the direction of multi-purpose tablets. e-Readers had been on the cusp of performing some actually superb issues, however now we simply have a choice of merchandise that every one look the identical. Put a Kindle Paperwhite 1 facet by facet to a Paperwhite 2 and see if anybody might inform the distinction.
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 Submit and the New York Occasions have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
