Around 10 Million people likely to use e-readers by 2010
Monday, 30 November 2009, 22:28 IST   |    2 Comments
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Around 10 Million people likely to use e-readers by 2010
Bangalore: Kindle, the popular e-book reader was the bestselling, most wished for and most gifted item on Amazon. Nook, the brand new e-reader unveiled by Barnes and Noble (who claim it to be the world's most advanced e-book reader), is already out of stock because of unexpected demand. This is when e-book readers today are priced a bit uncomfortably around $250 and are in a nascent stage in terms of features, much like the first Ford car, if I may carry forward the analogy. By the end of 2010, it is expected that 10 million people will be using e-readers. And if by any chance they break the $100 barrier, the floodgates will really open. There are reports that we already have an enterprising Indian publishing industry representative planning to bring in an economical e-reader for the Indian market with Chinese collaboration. And Apple, of course, is rumored to have a real ace up its sleeve. So, apparently, there is a lot waiting to happen in the near future which could turn things completely around for electronic reading. This really brings us to the all-important question - what's the whole song and dance about? We are pretty happy reading our books, why do we need an electronic reader? For one, it weighs approximately the same as a paperback but can store about 1,500 books; so that's like your personal library moving around with you - to the conference, on a flight, in the waiting lounge, just about everywhere. And then, you don't have to desperately keep looking for that elusive copy of the book you have been looking forward to read because it's just a click away - log on to a supporting website like amazon.com and you have the book downloaded in less than a minute in almost any part of the world. There is no extra fee, apart from paying for the book. If that's not all, your e-book reader also remembers the last page read for each book and has a zoom feature with various levels of text size among a lot of other features like letting you take notes on a page and saving them, MP3 playback and basic browsing to check your e-mail (where available) as also working like a GPS. The biggest bonus is that an e-book already sells at a lower price than a physical book and soon we should see a dramatic lowering on that - you can expect the price to be actually lower than half of what it is now.
Source: IANS
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