I spent this weekend at the excellent BookCamp Vancouver 2009 unconference, where I moderated a group discussion on “The State of the Electronic Book”. The session description:
Devices such as the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Stanza iPhone application, and many others are changing how people access books and (more importantly) how authors reach readers. This session will provide a brief background on the current state of the market, an introduction to the technology, and a guided discussion on the ramifications of this disruptive development for publishers, authors, and readers alike.
For those of you that missed the session, I’ve recorded a version for your enjoyment:
Our holiday projections should be seen for what they are: An acknowledgement that 2009 has been and will be a year of breakout success for eReaders, tempered by realism that retailers, despite their best intentions, are still learning how to sell these products to curious but uninformed consumers.
The plethora of new devices and the trend of booksellers pursuing e-book device partners appears to be making the dream of electronic books a market reality. Forrester predicts US sales of e-reader devices to hit 3 million in 2009, up 50% from past predictions, with 30% of those sales occurring during the Christmas shopping season.
Forrester has published a new report titled “The eReader Price Squeeze” examining consumers’ willingness to pay for an e-reader. The results aren’t pretty:
It would appear that an global economic collapse has been enough to quell consumer’s normal gadget-hungry ways.
What we found was that the price points for how most consumers value eReaders is shockingly low–for most segments, between $50 and $99. (Currently, eReaders in the US are priced between $199 for the Sony Pocket Reader and $489 for the Kindle DX.)
Despite the price decreases for devices from Sony, and the addition of new lower-price competitors such as Cool-er, devices are still way too high. Does this mean we can expect to see more price decreases over the next couple of months as retailers prepare to battle for consumers’ Christmas dollars?
Market research firm DisplaySearch is predicting sales of e-paper displays, the predominant display technology used by e-reader devices, will grow to $9.6 by 2018. Sales for 2009 are expected to reach $431M, a near-quadrupling of 2008 sales ($129M).
While this year’s growth is to be expected given the number of new devices that have come on the market, I’m not sure the long-term growth is warranted (at least not without seeing the report data). We haven’t yet really seen if users are going to accept these devices in the long-term, or if they’ll be supplanted by alternatives. What happens if people get tired of a zillion different devices and decide an iPhone is “good enough” for their portable reading requirements? Or “heads-up” virtual displays become the norm?
Ten years is a long time, and a lot can happen. To put it in perspective, ten years ago most people didn’t have cell phones or broadband in their home. Although the rapid adoption of these technologies might speak in favor of e-readers becoming the norm, there’s just as much a chance that the trend of accelerating technological change may render e-readers obsolete before they reach mass adoption.
