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Report: E-Readers Set to Disrupt Publishing Market
Wednesday, November 4, 2009

With over 40 portable reader units now in market and many more coming, the e-reader device is poised to become “one of the major disruptive technologies of the 21st Century,” says research and advisory firm mediaIDEAS in a new report. Steadily declining prices and advances in color displays by 2016 will help these portable devices reach 446 million units.

Why would analysts be so high on a device whose mass market appeal remains unproven and whose technology is, at best, rudimentary? The mediaIDEAS researchers feel that affordability and exponential technological change will drive both publishers and consumers to embrace the e-reader experience. For instance, the company feels that by 2020 e-readers will cost about $50 each. Their color displays (by 2016) will support a much wider range of material that formerly was in print. “By 2015, e-paper e-readers will be employed to display virtually any form of printed content from monochrome text heavy office documents and newspapers to high quality full color magazines and brochures with audio and video components,” says senior analyst Nick Hampshire.

Hampshire has been researching the e-reader market for four years. mediaIDEAS is a consultancy that emphasizes e-ink, digital magazine and portable reader technologies and holds conferences on the topic. Hampshire expects that the current rigid monochrome technology of the Amazon Kindle and similar devices will diversify by 2012 into 9-inch roll-able or foldable e-readers as well as the classic rigid format. Likewise, the field will see displays larger than 9-inches that are designed to carry newspaper and magazine content. The market will recognize the limitations of the current smaller formats dedicated to books and develop larger devices to accommodate richer media experiences.

The report projects that 5 million e-book readers will be sold in 2010 for a value of $975 million. In 2013, 115 million units will be sold, mediaIDEAS estimates. The rising price of paper and distribution in this period will push publishers to seek out lower priced digital distribution routes. Flexible e-readers should appear in 2010. The flexible, color magazine e-readers should appear on the market in 2013 and will quickly overtake monochrome units. The color magazine readers’ sales could reach $14 billion off of 280 million units in 2020.

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