How many e-book readers do you think are out there right now for you to choose from? If you did a little digging, I bet you’d find 50 or so. Maybe 10 really worth checking out. But right now is a bit of a weird period in e-reader history. The Kindle cemented e-readers in the consumer headspace, catapulting them from weirdo alternative technology to mainstream gadget. That’s what the iPad threatens to do with tablets — we’ll see about that. But the Kindle and the iPad are two important data points in the current e-reader wars; the question, upon the answer of which depends the success of many a device, is whether “bonus” features like second screens and weird form factors in e-readers will be enough to differentiate them from the high-profile devices pressing them on both flanks?
See, the vast majority of e-readers were designed as a response to the Kindle, not to tablet computers, which may or may not obsolete e-readers altogether. It’s a bad situation: the whole time you’re improving your competitor’s product, someone else is skipping your entire device class on the grounds that it will be made ridiculous by their awesome gadget. Some of the special features developed to combat the Kindle will stay, and some won’t live to see their own first birthday.
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