TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics

Archive for the ‘netbooks’ Category

Good for e-books: Netbook shipments rocket from 500K in first quarter to 4.4 million in third

Monday, January 26th, 2009

By David Rothman

Netbook shipments grew from 500,000 in the first quarter of 2008 to 4.4 million in the third, and they could double this year, despite the economic slowdown, according to Gartner research and other analysts, as reported in the New York Times.

imageFor e-book-lovers and for publishers seeking to expand their markets, that’s good news.

Netbooks lend themselves better to E reading than do traditional desktops. Some desktop users may even be ditching larger machine in favor of this cheaper more portable approach, with some of the netbooks costing a mere $200.

"Analysts," says the Times, "expect PC sales to fall in 2009 for just the second time in the last two decades, with desktops falling even faster than they did in 2007 or 2008."

Plus, something else might give the e-book market a boost in this era of more-portable hardware. What if Netbook-makers shrink the size of the nonscreen components and along the way also let you use the devices in a tablet mode (like the OLPC XO-1)—yet better for E reading? It’s bound to happen.

Netbooks a major factor in recent e-book growth?

Meanwhile e-book sales shot up stunningly last year, even though they’re still a fraction of the total book market, and one wonders how much of this could be not from the iPhone or Kindle or Sony reader but rather from those millions of netbook customers. Anyone care to speculate on the growth contributions that the various kinds of devices are each making? Netbooks almost surely are at least a major reason. Remember, the ones running XP or trying to run Vista can work with Mobipocket and other software used to read commercial e-books.

With this in mind, I’d heartily recommend that mass publishers consider cross-promo deal with software providers and netbook manufacturers, just as Harlequin and Grand Central have been doing with Sony.

(more…)

Posted in E-books and all that, e-book, e-book economics, e-book ergonomics, e-books, ebook, ebooks, netbooks | No Comments » | Read more..