Comments on: Cellphones vs. dedicated e-readers: Why Cory’s PARTLY right

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:03:27 +0000

Cory suggests that the real reason there are so few Kindles is that Amazon couldn’t outbid the people who contract the manufacture Happy Meal toys. But, typical of Cory, he provides zero evidence in support of his theory. Zilch. Nit. Nada.

Somehow I think Amazon could have outbid the people who contracted for things like this and this.

(I hope the above URLs work properly. The previewer is mangling them badly and I can’t figure out why! So if they don’t work, just envision any wacky Chinese-made plastic-and-electronic device you want - and you know there are many!)

So I’m not really buying his theory about there not being enough manufacturers. The more likely bottlenecks are (1) e-ink screen availability (we once saw the same sort of bottleneck with LCD screens, you know), and (2) fact that e-readers still haven’t reached tipping point yet (MP3 players and cellphones didn’t immediately must-have devices either). Or maybe Amazon simply underestimated demand, and it’s taking time to tool up a larger production line.

How many Cory prognostications have come true? I just don’t see him as the Prophet of All Things E - in fact I think he’s wrong more often than he’s right.

By: Garson O'Toole

Garson O'Toole — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:06:16 +0000

Websites in the category “How It Works” are popular on the internet. Many people are curious about the techniques behind technology, but it is easy to provide flawed explanations. I think Doctorow’s short description of E-Ink is flawed. He says:

E-Ink works on the basis of a close-knit grid of little two-tone balls that are physically rotated from white-side to black-side when a charge is applied to them.

The explanation given at the E-Ink website differs from this. Here is a link to a picture at the E-Ink website that describes how E-Ink works. E-Ink uses two different types of chips – “positively charged white pigment chips” and “negatively charged black pigment chips”. It does not use two-tone balls that rotate. There was a technology called Gyricon developed at Xerox that used “bichromal beads” of the type Doctorow describes. But Gyricon differs from E-Ink and Gyricon development seems to be in limbo.

By: Rita Toews

Rita Toews — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:22:32 +0000

Interesting info about reading on a cellphone - according to the Economist, in Japan sales of mobile-phone novels—books that you download and read, usually in instalments, on the screen of your cell phone—have jumped from nothing five years ago to over ¥10 billion ($82m) a year today (The Economist)

Those figures are high enough to make you sit up and take notice.

By: Bill Janssen

Bill Janssen — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:29:10 +0000

Here's what I wrote for our internal blog:

Cory Doctorow explains why e-readers are slow, clunky, but still in short supply: manufacturers aren’t interested in reading, either. They’d rather build “socket wrenches, Happy Meal toys, laptop computers, prison cafeteria trays, decorative tin planters, vinyl action figures, keychain flashlights and cheap handguns.” Or phones. Favorite quote:
E-Ink is a brilliant solution in search of an economically compelling problem. $400 e-book readers are not that problem.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:59:16 +0000

As an unabashed Kindle lover, I think Cory’s right. I think this is key:

“Frankly, book reading just isn’t important enough to qualify for priority treatment in that marketplace.”

A standalone ebook reader is great for me. But then I read 4 books last week. That apparently puts me in a small subset of heavy readers. This group is clearly not large enough to drive a large dedicated ebook market (as opposed to the niche that the Sony Reader and Kindle seem to occupy).

If there was a color Kindle that could refresh fast enough to support videogames, however…I would so play WoW on that thing.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:36:30 +0000

I sort of agree, actually. I am in the market for a new ipod, and I actually did buy a classic only to return it because, with my other gizmos on board, it was just TOO MUCH to carry. A few times, I have wished that my ebookwise had just a little bit extra on it, or that I could get a phone which syncched to iTunes for less than the enormously expensive iPhone. And now that I have the ebookwise, I have been leaving the Dana at home more and more. I do think that eventually, an OLPC might be my perfect carry-along gizmo, but for right now, it’s the phone, ipod and ebookwise along with either the Dana or the Macbook when the need arises. I do have a hack to get my phone numbers on the ebookwise, but I still have my calendar in the Dana…

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:32:05 +0000

Great thoughts, Rob, but even with an OLPC machine and a Sony Reader, I find myself reading on PDAs, too, when I’m in the mood. As for roll-out paper, it’s almost here in the form of the Readius. It’s both a cell phone and e-reader and will be sold later this year. Last I knew, the phone was really for Europeans more than Americans, and of course the resolution and the rest are not what they should be, but it’s still a nice preview of the future. Thanks. David

By: Rob Preece

Rob Preece — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:49:17 +0000

Let’s keep timescale in mind here. Ten or twenty years from now, we’ll all have video input displayed directly onto our optical nerves, rendering the whole cellphone vs. dedicated reader issue moot. So, the question is, how do we get there and whether there’s enough of a market for dedicated readers now to repay the investment.

I think that, today, a dedicated reader is superior to any of the multifunction devices I’m familiar with. I think this will still be the case at the end of 2008 but I’m not sure about 2009 but it seems possible that dedicated eReaders will be the better reading experience until 2010. Three years is normally a long enough time to repay investments in the high-tech world.

Like you, I’ve been hearing about the roll-out ePaper display being almost here for years. I know it’ll get here eventually and hope it will be cool and useful. I’d like to see final pricing, refresh rates, screen quality and durability before I’m convinced this is the ultimate solution.

Besides the multi-function aspect, the great advantage of the PDA/cellphone is that it’s highly portable. Even though I love my eBookWise, I still use my Palm for a lot of reading because I carry it in my pocket and it’s there–when I’m waiting for an appointment, having my oil changed, or when I’m alone at lunch in a restaurant. Ultimately I’d like to see one device, but then, I am looking forward to the direct optical nerve thing.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com