Published in News

E-Readers need to drop below $50

by on04 September 2009

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Otherwise the market will stay the same


Analysts
looking at the future of eBooks say that the technology has not go a bat's chance in hell of overtaking paper until the price of a reader drops below $50.

Currently the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader are priced at a lot more than $50 in fact the screen alone costs $60 to make. However Forrester Research has calculated that the technology must get lower than $50 before normal people will bother buying one.

E-reader manufacturers will have to find innovative ways to bring costs down, such as adopting the subscription model common among wireless carriers and mobile phone manufacturers. Newspapers and magazines, desperate for a workable business model, would be likely partners for such a technology. Basically if a newspaper sponsors a reader to run a subscription service, then ebooks could take off.

To do that a newspaper would have to set up a deal with a two year subscription, much like the telephone market has now. But apparently at the end of the day there are too few people who actually read books out there to support a huge ebook market. “the majority of consumers don’t care enough about reading or technology to invest in this type of single-purpose device at anything close to realistic prices,” Forrester said.
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